No culture in academia

[see: The Written World]

Steve Jobs said: "The only problem with Microsoft is they have no taste. In the sense that they don't think of any original ideas and bring any culture into their products. I am saddened by the fact that Microsoft make really third rate products."

I am going to focus on this excerpt: they don't bring any culture into their products. This is possibly going to be the central tenet of my PhD studies: that culture exists, and academia exists, and the overlap is where students reside (and learning occurs). Students bring culture with them, and yet the academic environment is reluctant to embrace culture. The academic environment is unique and separate from culture, and exists to imbue students with academic rigor and discourse. This form of discourse is bound in discipline and regulation which are completely contrary to popular culture which favours self-expression, creative freedom, and individuality. Will academia yield to popular culture and embrace the new discourse?

[tag: community]

Non-specific and versatile

[see: New Yorker article on Ivy League selection criteria]

This article cites a study conducted on boys who were offered a place a particular school. And it followed the academic success of those who went to that school, compared with those who declined the offer and went elsewhere. It found out that the 'good' students who chose to go to the 'poorer' schools did as well in their careers as the 'good' students who went to the 'good' schools. Thus suggesting that if you are a hardworking and intelligent person you’ll end up doing well regardless of where you went to school.

This is another example to add to the suite of comments suggesting that success isn't the result of a specific indicators. In this case: your school. In Coffield's learning styles inventory critique: the versatile learner. In evolutionary psychology: the plastic/adaptive brain. In human cognition studies: continuous processing.

[tag: learning]

Privacy of the modern individual

I want to focus for a while on a comment by Feenberg: "The organic community of speech, based on repetition and performance, gives way to the privacy of the modern individual." Feenberg's context for this comment is the observed shift away from the spoken discourse, amongst many, in the church hall - to the written discourse of individuals, alone, with their computers.

I wish to first focus on the "privacy of the modern individual". Feenberg's modern individual is an online individual. Yes, the online individual is usually private - in the physically isolated sense. However privacy is more than being physically alone, there are additional ways to define separateness online. These include the level of disclosure, intimacy and control of the individual. Separateness online is actually quite difficult to sustain online [refs from Sian] - and I will speak about that later. I think it is important to differentiate 'private' from 'personal'. I suspect that 'personal' might better describe the distinction Feenberg is wanting to make. He is perhaps not saying that the modern individual is alone and not participating, but alternatively that he is making choices about what to engage with. The modern individual has choice, and choice means control. And the modern individual chooses to make the public space his private space. He does this offline by listening to i-pods and watching videos on trains and buses [ref]. He does this online by being personal in weblogs, chatrooms, and discussion boards. How can one describe an individual as 'private' when his identity is known to an online community, and the subject matter shared is intimate? [Note: lead to discussion of compartmentalisation]

The essential requirement for online privacy is control. The autonomy of the online environment enables the individual to control the overlapping circles of the privacy Venn Diagram. I spoke in my previous essay about how the weblog owner controls all the elements of their weblog, and that this control conveys a sense of safety. Yes, control conveys a sense of safety - and a sense of privacy - and an ability to be personal, publicly. Control is the dimmer switch on the public/private continuum. It is choice and control which are legacy of the modern individual, a bequest which allows him to flit between public and private, as desired. Feenberg's 'privacy' is merely an artefact.

The post-modern mind

[see: the mind is not like a computer and making modern minds]

Post-modern theories of human identity, according to Sherry Turkle (1995, pX), are characterised by terms such as decentred, fluid, non-linear, and opaque. This shift towards a post-modern view of self is reflected in new theories describing human cognition and human psychology. Older models of cognition likened our minds to computers, with our neural systems processing words in distinct stages. Cognition was regarded as being either on or off, and in a static state in between. The new model suggests sensory input is processed continuously you do not have to be in one state or another like a computer, but can have values in between - you can be partially in one state and another.

Another example of a shift in thinking away from the singular and the distinct is that of human psychology. One popular doctrine is that the mind is massively modular containing hundreds of thousands of functionally specialised 'mental-organs', each dedicated to solve a single problem. An emerging (perhaps 'post-modern') theory is that in designing the human brain, evolution hit upon a different solution: a plasticity that allows the brain to adapt to highly variable and often rapidly changing environments.

So here we have models of the brain which describe it as fluid, and adaptable - much like post-modern characterisations of self and identity. I especially like this quote from the New Scientist article: "human psychological evolution was driven by rapidly changing environmental demands, and that the adaptive response to these changing demands was neural plasticity." A plastic self. Clearly scientific theory is influenced by the cultural environment in which researchers find themselves, however it is encouraging that these theories suggest an adaptive and versatile brain - which is not unlike the suggestions endorsed by Sherry Turkle (1995) describing identity, specifically online identity.

The multi-terrained and highly diverse online world selects for those individuals who are flexible and adaptive. This is similar to the Coffield (2004) critique of Learning Styles which grouped learning style models along a continuum - at one end those claiming that learning styles are constitutionally fixed, and the other those which are flexible and open to change. His conclusion was that the flexible learners with the more open learning styles did well irrespective of the the learning situation. [Note: I am paraphrasing. I need to re-read for reliability.]

[tag: identity]

Interest groups and peers

Peers are what you are... so searching for peers leads you to people. Interests are what you do... so searching for interests can take you to resources, or people who share those interests.

Examples of peer groups which feature prominantly in blogosphere are: teens, gays, mothers, singletons. Examples of interests prominant online are: politics, music, religion, photography.

[tag: community]

The core self

I think it will be useful to work our way outwards, during this essay, from the unitary, the private, the compartmentalised to the multiple, the public and the conglomerated. In other words from the Self, to the community. Whilst many paradoxes are evident in online identity and online community I hope to demonstrate that each can be described by Weinberger's small pieces loosely joined phrase.

Let us take the core self as the starting point. If that starting point is a unitary self reflecting inwards, then this core self would be your sense of self. Who you think you are. Your internal view. The core self is introspectective, self-referential, internalised, intrinsic. In other words the private aspects of identity. The boundaries for the core self might be defined by Personality. Without getting distracted by a debate about what degree personality is/is not mutable (i.e. whether or not I am an exponent of behaviourism) I would like to suggest that the core self IS the personality. 'Personality' being simply defined as "the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion unique to an individual" - the expression of the unique essence of self. It is through the filter of personality which we interact with ourselves, and the environment (others).

[tag: identity]

Tagging is arbitrary?

The result of this tagging is two-fold. First of all, it means web-users can elect to follow trails of tags which lead them to similarly tagged items. Similarly tagged items thus coagulate into groups. These groups are paradoxically both arbitrary and organised. Tagging, is, in most cases gloriously arbitrary. The choice of which tag/s to assign an item is left to the user to decide, and having done so the tag will betray neither user ignorance nor insight. For example, clicking on a tag in del.icio.us called identity will retrieve bookmarks other people have classified as identity. The most common context of identity by del.icio.us users is Personal Digital Identity. Clicking on the identity tag in del.icio.us in the hope to find bookmarks of the philosophical context of identity will require some scrolling down the page to locate a match. The identity tag is hence undifferianted. A bookmark tagged identity (context PDI) will appear on the same scrollable list as those tagged identity (context missing persons). Tag names are arbitrary. Retrieval is organised.

Whilst tagging may be arbitrary, it is certainly neither artificial nor contrived. We are organising our own information, using own own descriptors. In that sense it is very real: reflecting what matters to us. Classification is unmediated, and bottom-up... not top-down. So, collectively tagging represents our online world, as we see it.

[tag: community]

Tagging as identity

The peripetatic activity which the hyperlinked architecture of the web encourages implies that many online encounters will be fortuitious. Increasingly though many will be intentional - with interest and peer groups being actively sought. The ease of finding interest and peer groups online is facilitated by the increasing willingness of web-users to tag themselves (their online profiles), and their online creations and submissions. These tags form part of their online identity, part of their distributed online presence. In an online context those things you are interested in lead you to peers and/or interest groups. Your identity, online, emerges from your associations and connections, and your interests. Tagging facilitates this, by becoming an expression of your online self. You are actively categorising your online self. Which other people can pick up on.

[tag: identity]

Serialising your writing

I heard a story on Radio Four a couple of weeks ago, in which they talked about sporting personality autobiographies. What stood out was a comment by one of the speakers, who was from a publishing company. He said way these autobiographies are sold by serialising them in a newspaper. I think he may have even said "the ONLY way they sell any quantity is by serialising them". They are abridged, to suit the paper they appear in, of course. But evidently no-one cares.

This made me reflect on the appeal which weblogs have. Readers are foremost drawn to the quality of the content (whether it is a photo/illustration blog, or a text blog). But significant appeal is their regular updating i.e. readers get a regular-something-new. We like a little bit of excitement. A little bit of change. A little bit of news. A little bit of new information. And we will return to the weblog to get these somethings-new.

It's amusing, and completely to be expected, that people are using weblogs as a platform from which to serialise their books. Pete Townsend being an example. Bloggers bypass the publishing companies and newspapers - and publish/serialise their books directly into the blogosphere. And what a perfect fit it is - after all weblogs are personal publishing. If the reader likes the content they will invest in the weblog, returning to read successive instalments.

But unlike newspapers... there is no financial investment. And, I guess, the hope is if they like the book they may purchase a copy. [Which, incidentally, is one of the arguments the GooglePrint advocates make... if you read snippets and like them... you'll buy the book... or visit the Library.]

[Footnote: doh! Blogger.com has covered Blogging Your Novel extensively here and here. I think I knew that, but just had to get there via my own route.]

[tag: writing]

That which goes unsaid

[see: Tom Coates 24-Sep-05]

I've previously mentioned the strobe-light effect one gets of a weblogger. And that what is written about in their weblog isn't necessarily reflective of what is happening in their life, nor what is important. Whether you refer to it as non-disclosure or non-inclusion will depend on where on the intentional-unintentional continuum you think their motive for not having written about a particular topic rests. It's easy to think of reasons, and I'll humour myself by listing a few:

1. not thinking subject worthy of inclusion
   
2. simple forgetfulness
   
3. not wanting to talk about it publicly
   
4. not having the time to write about it in the depth you'd like

Tom focuses on the last one. He, like the rest of us, have dozens of ideas spinning around our heads - but full-time jobs, relationships, and other commitments don't allow us the time to write as a pastime. We read for pleasure, but writing-in-a-weblog is as close as writing-for-pleasure as most of us will get.

[tag: writing]

Online identity - evolve

Once that online identity has been pushed out into the blogosphere it has entered the public realm and becomes public property. Online communities will subsequently ensnare and/or entice you, and your identity will evolve in response to the communities you associate with. Community association occurs on different levels: linking, lurking, active participation (commenting). Don't forget that we are social animals - but our socialness is not restricted to F2F. Online we lurk, link and comment, with the F2F equivalents being respectively: listen, acknowledge and reply.

An online identity is fed by a multifarious interest set. Weblogs project your personality, and extend your identity by the connections that you make with communities who share your interests. The tentacles of your interests reach out to these communities, and likewise their tentacles reach out to you. A blogger can be enticed by an interest community i.e. post comments on, or link to weblogs in the community in the hope that they reciprocate. Or a blogger can be ensnared, when the community finds him... and comments on or links to his weblog.

I mentioned that social-software can attempt to recommend people who share the same interests as you. Whilst it is initially exciting to be identified by a member of the same tribe, it can become unmanageable if your inbox or comments field is over-run with these introductions. It feels like a succession of first dates... the same intoned small talk, comments, questions. The blogosphere is discerning, and the banal is deleted or unresponded to. My point being that your attempt to join an interest community may be thwarted if you fail to meet their standards. The centre of control, after all, remains with the community.

[tag: identity]

Personality cw Identity

Personality:
In Psychology: the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion unique to an individual. Exponents of behaviorism suggest that an individual's personality is developed through external stimuli. In the behaviorist model, personality can change significantly with a shift to a new environment.

Digital identity:
"The identity of a person, group, thing, process or any other entity is often expressed through a digital identifier within a certain context. A Social Security Number is a digital identifier that identifies a person within the context of the social security administration."

Cultural identity:
"Cultural identity is the (feeling of) identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as he is influenced by his belonging to a group or culture. Common habits, characteristics, ideas may be clear markers of a shared cultural identity, but essentially it is determined by difference: we feel we belong to a group, and a group defines itself as a group, by noticing and highlighting differences with other groups and cultures."

Personal identity:
"People have different physical appearances notably the sexual gender, shape of the face, skin pigmentation, height, and color of hair. The choice of clothing and bodily adornments vary. Sounds can be used for identification: the voice, language, timber, vocabulary, physical movements." There are questions about Persistence: What does it take for a person to persist - for the same person to exist at different times?

[Identity defs from: Wikipedia]

[tag: personality]

Online identity - create

Identity is complex. Online identity is perhaps even more complex since it is more visible, more dynamic and more plastic... than our restricted real life (RL) personas. Online we are who we pretend to be (Turkle). The restrictedness of the RL identity might be what we are reacting to by adopting the flexible and mutable online personas. Afterall, our online identities are built, not received. Whether it is intentional or not, you create your online identity by virtue of what you include and omit. Weblogs give the blogger control. They have control over weblog format (your 'personality'), publication (to what degree people can interact) and content (unmediated, uncensored). In an online context your weblog content is your identity. It is an identity you create, and control. Creating an identity online, and having control within a weblog may be a reaction to the lack of control we have over our RL identities and lives. A parallel identity.

This parallel identity may serve as a safety valve. When you search for Online Identity in Google the results are not what I might have expected. Such a search retrieves Online Identity of a context analogous to Digital Identity Theft. The same type of result is found when you interogate the identity tag within del.icio.us. It would appear that the Real Life You is expected to exactly mirror the Online You i.e. Real Life = Online. However: "Some may be uncomfortable with the idea of being identified at every turn, while others may seek to create false digital identities to protect their privacy" (NS).

The context of the 'online identity' which arose from the Google search is clearly different from the 'online identity' of interest to bloggers. The former is aligned to online security and constraint, and is more accurately Personal Digital Identity. The latter is aligned to online community and choice, and could be regarded as coalition of Cultural Identity and Personal Identity.

[tag: identity]

Music & identity

I want to mention an online identity adopted by bloggers, which isn't defined by text - but by music. Identity is complex, it is fed by a multifarious and changeable interest set. Online your identity is dynamic, and plastic. Music can be one of many defining characteristics by which people online locate and identify one another as being Like them. It's another method by which online communities of interest develop. Blogger.com recognises the value that music has for forging interest groups because an entire fields in your Profile is Favorite Music. These entries subsequently become hyperlinked tags, which when clicked take you to the profiles of other blogger.com folk who share that music favorite. Furthermore some bloggers are flagging the music they like by listing the music they are currently listening to in their side menu bar (this is also done for films, and books).

There is music social-software too, with their own listener communities. One of these is last.fm. "It is a music engine which is based on a collection of Music Profiles. Each music profile belongs to one person, and describes their taste in music. Last.fm uses these music profiles to make personalized recommendations, match you up with people who like similar music, and generate custom radio stations for each person." To see an example click on the Friends/Groups/Neighbours tabs.

You need to use the engine a couple of hundred times before it creates a large enough profile to be able to make recommendations, or link you to people who like the same music. Sometimes this works well, and sometimes it doesn't. In the latter example the person who shared the same musical taste didn't appreciate being contacted. So, some people use the tool for reasons other than community... i.e. for the personal recommendations perhaps.

[tag: identity]

Blogger depression pamphlet

[see: Blogger Depression pamphlet]

Although this is a tongue-in-cheek publication it quite nicely highlights the pressure bloggers feel under to post (i.e. perform for their public) and the self-induced stress that arises. Blogging communities seem to go through waves (or cycles) during which posting numbers fall away, or bloggers stop posting altogether. StressQueen notes how her blogging community has eroded. My own experience is similar, several personal weblogs that I have followed have disappeared off my blogroll. I don't, however, notice the same decrease in numbers amongst the professional weblogs I subscribe to. By 'professional' I mean: weblogs written for the purpose of sharing specialist information, and commentary. It would appear that if you are paid to blog, either directly or indirectly, you are less likely to abandon your weblog**. The rate of attrition (blogger fatigue) is more vicious amongst the non-professional blogging community. Professional bloggers do have Fallow Periods too, though.

The Blogging Depression pamphlet makes an important point: Blog for your own pleasure. It seems that bloggers stop blogging when they lose interest, pleasure, or visitors. There is a Pressure to Blog which comes from a strange sense of obligation to your blogging community. This pressure is at times quite stressful, especially when you feel that you haven't anything to blog about. The pressure to blog is perhaps a pressure to perform, hence it's a performance pressure. Why? Because blog readers want to be entertained.

**[This again, causes me to reflect on the Perseus observation that people who like writing (i.e. the journalists and professional writers who constitute the professional bloggers?) are less likely to abandon their weblog.]

[tag: community]

Photoblogging?

[see: BBC photoblogging gallery]

I stumbled across this today. I'm not sure, yet, what I want to say about photoblogging. I am going to leave this post as a placeholder. I'll return to it when I know what I want to say about it. There are a whole suite of things which feed into the images-in-blogs topic:

1. the ubiquitous Flickr and the its Blog button
   
2. Blogger.com's Photoblogging
   
3. the comment by John Dale about the use of images by students in Warwick Blogs': students had to manually, and laboriously, upload one image at a time. And yet, at the time of the interview (April 05?), they had uploaded 30,000 images. This surprised him, that despite the obstacles they wanted the facility. I've just checked and right now they have uploaded 52,000. I don't know if Warwick is still using same slow system for uploading files.
   
4. there are dozens of communities like this of blogging artists (check out the blogroll)

[tag: community, and identity?]

The word "you" can make a difference

[see: Want people to remember what you write? and Writing helps learning]

This post makes the point, yet again, about writing in the authentic voice. Impress them with your lucidity and they will be impressed with your knowledge.

A study from the Journal of Educational Psychology, issue 93 (from 2000), looked at the difference in effectiveness between formal vs. informal style in learning. In their studies, the researchers (Roxana Moreno and Richard Mayer) looked at computer-based education on botany and lightning formation and "compared versions in which the words were in formal style with versions in which the words were in conversational style."

In five out of five studies, students who learned with personalized text performed better on subsequent transfer tests than students who learned with formal text. Overall, participants in the personalized group produced between 20 to 46 percent more solutions to transfer problems than the formal group.

That study was conducted by Moreno, R., and Mayer, R.E. (2000) Engaging Students in Active Learning: The Case for Personalized Messages (Journal of Educational Psychology, 93).

Additionally the second reference provides endorsement of the value of writing, for remembering, and learning. Students are encouraged to write short essays of less than 500 words, in language devoid of jargon... "which a relative could understand". So, writing something in your own words is an aid to learning.

[tag: writing]

Prompt me a life

[see: Blogger's block]

The link above features in the weblog of blogger.com. Whilst I think these prompts-for-writing are pretty rubbish (an example: What would you do if your jelly sandwich landed jelly-down?) it's worth commenting that blogger.com thinks it should feature something like this. Evidently they recognise that people don't know what to write about in their weblog.

Warwick Blogs also recognises this and has a Prompts page. Plus it also has a Stuck for Ideas to Write About? Try these... button bang in the middle of its front page. The last suggestion in the Prompts was December 2004. Last entry in Stuck for Ideas was April 2005. My guess is that new bloggers are the ones who don't know what to write about. New bloggers think that they have to write exciting and entertaining weblogs. They think that their weblog must be a performance piece. Warwick Blogs has been up and running for a fair while now (start of academic year 2003/2004?). So students have found a use for their weblog... and don't need inspiration from prompt lists? [The same applies to blogger.com. There is a doubling of weblog numbers every 5 months, so blogger.com has an insatiable succession of new bloggers possibly unsure about what exactly they do with this technology?]

The interesting thing, when you read all the suggestions from these 3 sources, is that many of them are superlatives? You answer questions about the best, the first, the worst, the most, when you retire, your baby. They force you to reflect on milestones and memories... and not the daily minutiae. It is the minutiae which endears bloggers to oneanother, and builds community. It is the minutiae which differentiates one blogger Personality from another. it is the minutiae which identifies us as real and unique, and not a collection of check-box answers. I am not alone in despising the phoney personality these prompts extrude from us. Fuck Off.

What is unique about the personal weblog is that you write in an authentic voice about the things you are interested in. Which is normally your daily grind, the people in your life, and your projects/dreams. I'm not convinced that you need to adorn (detract from) your weblog with these accoutrements of phoneyness and same-ness.

[tag: writing]

Academic blogging

[see: Rob O'Toole]

Rob writes about why and how he uses Warwick Blogs for his academic work in his PhD in Philosophy. I have pulled out the following comments, as being ones I find insightful:

1. I do not want to risk getting involved with interactions that detract from my precious research time.
   
2. I also do not want to have to spend much time managing these interactions.
   
3. I need to have interactions with other philosophers in which we can share concepts, terminology, interests, entities, but without always directly engaging in a debate. We need to know each others territories and directions of movement, and know how to connect with them when required. We need to be able to pass around, try out and develop new concepts, without always having a direct debate about them.
   
4. The problem is 1) to avoid isolation, with my research becoming irrelevant and obscure; 2) to avoid getting involved in debates and misunderstandings that detract from my own research development.
   
   In short, we need to constitute a collective 'milieu' in which our own individual developments may occur.

Wrt management of unwelcome or banal comments Rob says It seems that the overhead of this extra commitment outweighs the milieu building power of blogs. First of all he makes a distinction between:

1. entries that I have written simply to position myself within the milieu;
   
2. and those in which I am looking for a more direct response.
   

Rob is either making statements, or Rob is inviting comments. He doesn't allow commenting in the first example, and will include an email link with an invitation for readers to email him if they have anything interesting to say. The second example is given open comment permissions, but ends with definite guidance as to what kind of responses he is after.

[tag: community]

A place for sycophancy?

[see: Don't be a jerk (Blog language)]

Evidently the corporate weblog world differs from that of personal weblogs - with respect to speaking your mind. Authenticity, by contrast, is valued in personal blogging, as the previous post confirms. For a personal weblog losing a few bloggers who no longer like what you are saying is not really a problem. However for corporate bloggers this is something for concern. Business bloggers are given this advice: "Don’t attack. Other bloggers will see it and avoid you like the plague." In a personal weblog speaking your mind, as a post or comment, is entertaining... and engaging. We applaud free speech in the blogosphere... unless you are a business, it appears. Damage limitation seems to be at the front of coroporate bloggers' minds.

[tag: writing]

Bloggers know what is genuine

[see: Suw Charman and John Dale]

1. The curse that is management-speak: Management-speak and marketing-speak are the sort of language which blogging in general abhors. "When businesses use words that are fundamentally at odds with the every day experience that we have of them... that's when people just turn off, put them in the 'deluded wankers' category and move on to much more down to earth sources of information, such as blogs."
   
   
2. Most readers ignore Lists, Lyrics and Quizzes: Most readers of blogs don't much care for blog entries which are online quiz answers, entries which are lists of (short) answers to questions, or entries which simply cite the lyric of a song without any further commentary or analysis. Most readers just blank these types of entries, scrolling right past them without looking at them at all, or just glancing very quickly over them.

Both are examples that the blogosphere, and bloggers are discerning. They demand that the subject matter and the writing be authentic - no jargon (marketese) or poor-quality content (quizzes, lists, lyrics). The medium of the weblog is the written word, and if the blogger does not use the written word in a way which is engaging, and personal then the readers will reject the weblog.

[tag: writing]

Theories of collaboration

[see: Stephen Downes speaks on online collaboration, at ALT-C]

I've not really thought before about why communities arise from within the blogosphere. Of course one of the reasons is the Communities of Interest reason: the family/friends, geography, hobbies/interests. But I'd not thought about the theories involved.

1. The Essentialist Theory (convergent, common purpose, same funding body etc)
   
2. The Exchange Theory (divergent, intrinsic motivation, interaction between autonomous and diverse entitites).

Tom Coates states: "Counter-intuitively the best, strongest, and most creative communities can emerge out of the interconnect nature of individual spaces." The Exchange Theory seems to fit weblog communities best.

Note to self: read about Exchange Theory of collaboration.

[tag: community]

Technorati's blogosphere

[see: Blog growth, Posting volume, Tagging, Spam, A-list & long tail]

Technorati's twice-yearly summaries clearly demonstrate that weblogs are not a fad, and growth/uptake has continued, and is sustained. Most notably the blogosphere continues to double every five months, with 55% being active. 13% of all weblogs are updated at least weekly - posting volume has doubled in the last 7 months. Weblog search and posting volumes responds to world events, and cause ripples in the blogosphere.

The webloggers appear to be comfortable with technology, as demonstrated by the following. About a third of all weblogs use tagging. More people are blogging from their camera-enabled mobile phones, using post-from-IM (AOL and MSN), using tools which post directly into weblogs (Flickr), and tagging their photos and links (social bookmarks).

A growth in spam blogs and fake blogs has accompanied the growth of the blogosphere. However key industry players (AOL, Google, MSN, Six Apart and Yahoo) are working together to minimise this.

Weblog use is world-wide. Japan, Korea, China, France and Brazil as demonstrating enthusiastic growth. Tagging is growing in languages outside of English as well, with high adoption rates in asian languages like Chinese and Japanese.

[tag: context]

What does the writer get?

As mentioned earlier writing a weblog is mainly for the community element. If it weren’t then you would just used some form of desktop diary software, of which there are many to choose. There is something intimate about having your weblog read, and commented to. People have web-stats behind their weblogs so that they know how many people visit. And they are affected when the stats change... drop, or suddenly increase. They feel despondent, or excited respectively. There is a real skill to writing a good weblog. The first item which appears on the tips to blogging list is always to "Write about what you love". The idea is that the more engaged you are with your subject the more interesting you blog will be. So, there we have it, in a nutshell, weblogs are written about things that the bloggers are interested in.

[tag: writing]

Why read a weblog?

Weblogs are a socially constructed reality in which the Reader’s contribution equals that of the Writer. It is a phenomenological reality. Despite having contrary perspectives the expectations of both parties are interdependent, and symbiotic. The reasons people read weblogs differ from the reasons they are written. Both parties have a contract to do their bit.

Why do people read weblogs? I’m sure there are as many reasons for reading weblogs as there are readers, but in my opinion the two main ones are voyeurism and information gathering. Voyeurism is easy to understand: people enjoy reading about other people. People feel that they can identify with the person behind the weblog, which makes their content more compelling. Each entry we read we get to know the writer better, we identify with them, or occasionally aspire to be like them. Cultural behaviours like our love of gossip, our interest in celebrities and reality television, and our enthusiastic consumption of biographical publications would appear to support this suggestion. The format of the weblog makes it easy to get up-to-date information about friends, people, situations and interests making them ideal for information gathering. Weblogs provide a valuable filtering function by searching out articles from lesser-known sites. In addition to this the writer may provide supplementary facts or an alternative perspective to that of the corporate media.

[tag: identity]

How the community grows?

However willing the blogger may be to engage with the weblog community, and however amenable the underpinning technologies may be to the task... it is not easy. Most weblog audiences are small. The bulk of the web is read by 4 or 5 people, or is completely private. Weblog readers are usually those already known to the blogger: friends and family. With time people link to them and they will grow. Weblogs build relationships amongst interest groups, geographic groups, and friends and family. They spread virally through these groups, and cults of personality emerge as new weblogs are created.

Readers who express their opinions on their site will be interested in the responses to their comments and will return to read them. Commenters become invested in these conversations and come back to them. Ties in with Gilly Salmon 65% come back to read message board response. Bloggers amplify each other’s voice when they link to them. Having your stuff read by, and replied to, by someone else is an intimacy. What you then see is a messy extension of the blogger's identity by those who respond to them, and those they connect to. It is this connected identity which produces a multi-subjectivity, unique to online communities. Counter-intuitively the best, strongest, and most creative communities can emerge out of the interconnect nature of individual spaces. Empowers the development in an organic way of self-selecting communities of interest. Dissolves the geographical barriers (global interconnectedness).

[tag: community]

How a community develops?

The common denominator of all weblogs is personal publishing – and all bloggers who make entries in a weblog are doing this. Even though bloggers share their world with whoever is reading not all will want to be public, or be part of the weblog community. Bloggers, therefore, have to make decisions about their own publication and reciprocation, and whether they want to engage with the blogging community. Weblog software allows them to decide to whom they make content available, the level of privacy their weblog has, and the degree of interaction they want. Each weblog has the ability to be highly connected by utilising tools such as aggregators, blogrolls, commenting, specific site mentions, and trackback.

As mentioned earlier weblogs are personal publishing, and social software. Another argument for deflecting the focus away from the function of a weblog is that by not doing so the equally interesting social/community facet of weblogs... are overlooked. After an entry has been made in a weblog bloggers expect to be signalled and perhaps responded to. If not, why would they publish their thoughts on the Internet, instead of letting them sit in their personal files? We’ve already seen that bloggers demonstrated their willingness by making their weblogs public, and by having an identity.

[tag: community]

We want to be public

Being public, and having an identity are necessary requirements for sociability online. It would appear that the majority of bloggers do want to be public. 76% do not limit access/readership to their entries in any way (MIT). Furthermore most bloggers identify themselves: 55% of respondents provide real name, and 20% provide variant of real name.

[tag: identity]

The value of the personal

The personal voice, the conversational voice, is the heart of the weblog. It is the personal voice of the blogger which facilitates the social inclination of a weblog. Indeed the uncensored, uncontrolled voice is one of weblogs' greatest strengths. Each weblog has a human guide who you get to know, and we get to know them because the personal voice is idiosyncratic, authentic, devoid of marketese. Voice is an undeniably powerful authority, and the personal voice is one you trust. Because the voice is authentic it is subjective. The subjectivity describes our world as it matters to us – honestly - which explains why weblogs pull people together in a way that most published writing doesn't. There is genuine interest because we get to speak in our own voice, about things which matter to us, and there is persistence. You can come back, and the more you read the more you are getting to know me. This is why friendships start up between bloggers so easily - because we already know each other.

[tag: writing]

Public/private continuum

So, where might weblogs fit within the private/public continuum? Weblogs seem to straddle personal and social spaces, they are run and owned by us, yet are published into the public environment. Hence they are an example of the connected identity (as opposed to the private identity) i.e. what we do in public in relation to others. The selves on the web are unavoidably social. The blogger shares their world with whoever is reading, posting to a large anonymous readership. Rebecca Blood states that weblogs are a "disruptive technology because they have changed personal publishing so profoundly that the old rules no longer apply". This may well be the case, since we appear to be writing ourselves into existence on the web, one blog entry at a time.

[tag: identity]

Cultural shift: private to public

Blogging software, however is not a neutral technical conduit... it is a cultural artefact (van Dijck). Technology has responded to cultural change, that people can be public. Weblogs are representative of this change and offer an unprecedented opportunity for individual expression on a world-wide scale. It is the current cultural climate, where the private is mixed with the public, which propagates this. Weblogs can be seen to facilitate a social process of exchange and participation i.e. people are choosing to be public. Consequently this interplay between public and personal online has resulted in the line, which normally distinguishes between them, becoming very fuzzy.

[tag: identity]

Ease of publishing

Originally the concept of the web was that everyone could publish, connect, communicate. The truth was that provided you could write HTML you could have a website, and your voice could be heard. Conforming to this belief are most universities - they provide their students with webspace, yet their students do not make use of this space to create personal web pages (John Dale). It was the appearance of weblogs which represented a reinvention of the open-publishing philosophy of the web. Initially the early weblogs were made by web-enthusiasts – those who knew how to code a web page. However since the arrival of software such as Blogger the barriers to entering and owning a weblog are very low indeed. You just type your content into the WYSIWYG editor, press the Publish button – the copy is inserted into the template and FTP-ed to a server. The software provider even hosts your weblog for you. These new web-based tools enabled individuals with little or no technical expertise to to create weblogs easily and quickly. The weblog bandwagon-jumping turned into an explosion.

[tag: context]

Why are weblogs so popular?

Before discussing possible weblog metaphors I think it is important to briefly provide a historical context of the weblog phenomenon. Weblogs are referred to as a recent technology... because they have suddenly become very visible, and gone mainstream. However the first weblog appeared in 1997, in Robot Wisdom, an online magazine which used it for 'logging the web'. Since 2003 weblogs have exploded into view, a giant technological snowball, doubling in number every 5 months, one weblog created per second. Today there are 16.3 million, with approximately 80,000 more being added each day. Furthermore, two-thirds of those weblogs are still being updated 3 months later (Technorati ref). We are now seeing our third generation of bloggers: the first being Geeks, the second Extroverts, and the third are the Mainstream users (Hamish ref). Weblogs, and blogging, have become mainstream. In this we have undeniable confirmation that despite the confusion about What is a weblog for? people have found a use for them. A large number of people... people who continue to use them.

In light of this explosion of popularity we are prompted to question Why are weblogs so popular? and Why is blogging so popular? The underpinning WYSIWYG technology is regarded as the overarching reason for weblogs' success. And the cultural shift, from private to public, is believed to explain the unprecedented adoption of blogging. So, weblogs are social a software, they enable personal publishing... and they persist. Persistence is the final ingredient required to describe the weblog phenomenon. Persistence is the enticement the private needs to go public... or become social.

[tag: context]

Why weblogs are not understood?

There is genuine interest in weblogs, yet it is clear that they are frequently misunderstood. Weblogs exhibit an obstinate resistance to being categorised, and this causes frustration when trying to answer that most basic question: Why have a weblog? People have different understandings of what weblogs are and refer to them either in terms what they evolved from, or by suggesting analogues. The analogues concentrate on what the function of the weblog might conceivably be e.g. online diary, linklog, scrapbook, news filter, punditry page. No doubt these analogues (or sub-categories) arose to help those who are unfamiliar with weblogs make sense of what these sites are for i.e. to answer the Why have a weblog? question.

However the conflation of function and form is not helpful. If you must assign a function to weblogs then why not dismiss the ill-fitting sub-categories, and instead refer to them by their primary function: Personal Publishing? Even simpler would be to unshackle the weblog from an anticipated use, and define it not by its function, but by what it represents. It is worth pausing to remind ourselves that behind the personal publishing is a person, the blogger - hence the weblog is a manifestation of a person, the blogger. In their definitions of weblogs both Weinberger (2004) and Coates (2000) reject analogues of function, or any mention of precursors... and instead refer to weblogs simply as a Representation of a Person. This elegant definition uncouples weblogs from expectations of how they might be used.. and any subsequent corollaries regarding whether they are appropriate for those purposes. Having done this one can begin to search for a suitable metaphor which can help us order weblogs' seemingly disparate elements.

[tag: concept]

Coherance across metaphors?

Wrt my last post. Is there coherance across metaphors?

[tag: concept]

A metaphors works when...

Again, from Lakoff & Johnson.

A metaphors work when it satisfies a purpose, namely understanding an aspect of the concept.

Here are a selection of metaphors I have been thinking about. I'll spend some time, later, validating and explaining them.

Purpose	Metaphor
Where?	Middle Place
	Written World
	Walled Garden
	Cyberhome
	Third Space
	The Confessional
What?	Performance Art
	2-way Mirror
	Mosaic
	Strobe Light
Why?	Living Online
	Confessional

[tag: concept]

Categorising weblogs

We, as humans, have a NEED to categorise. Our desire for Lumping of and Splitting into groups evolved to help us define what things are, and how they relate to us. We identify 'thing with wings and feathers' as Bird, and 'thing with big teeth' as Predator. All cultures share this innately human characteristic.

Culturally we have a passion for quantification, and an obsession with purposeful ends. We like to know what the purpose of something is. Perhaps this is why there is a conceptual struggle within the popular media as to what, exactly, a weblog is FOR and why someone might have one? And because there are as many uses for a weblog as there are bloggers* there is confusion about how to categorise them. They are regarded, hence, as a sub-category of Diary.

*Each weblog is unique, by virtue of it being their unique space-other-than-Real-Life.

[tag: concept]

Sub-categorisation

[see: Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p85)]

"Sub-categorisation and metaphor are end points on a continuum."

A weblog is a Diary: subcategory.
A weblog is a Mosaic: metaphor.

I am not convinced. I would have thought that sub-categorisation and analogue are end points on a continuum. Surely a metaphor is tangental to both analogue and sub-category??

[tag: concept]

The weblog as A Place

[see: Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p29)]

When speaking of Container Metaphors Lakoff & Johnson say: "There are few human instincts more basic than territorality. And such defining of a territory, putting a boundary around it, is an act of quantification."

I have been playing around with weblog metaphors such as Middle Place, Cyberhome, Written World and Walled Garden. Each of them suggest: Somewhere which isn't The Real World.

The territorality element is evidenced by the furniture bloggers put around their weblogs: e.g. the template and the third-party tools they choose. And also by the people they invite to their Somewhere-other-than-Real-World space: blogrolls, blogmaps (e.g. FeedMap), syndication, and enabling commenting. Both of these elements (how they decorate their space, and who they invite) are ways that identify that space as their own.

[tag: concept]

Challenge yourself

When you compose a weblog post intended to challenge the reader, who is the idealised adversary you have in mind? Who are your arguments and counter-arguments being addressed to? I suggest that since it is an internal dialogue the reader/adversary is yourself.

Whilst you compose your argument the reader is absent. The reader must therefore be a hypothetical one conceived of by you, the writer. And in the writing of your arguments you will need to pre-empt the responses of that hypothetical reader. The hypothetical ripostes you anticipate from this hypothetical reader are in fact created in your own imagination... they evolve from your own ideas. You pose an argument, anticipate a counter-argument, and compose a response to this. Therefore it is you who is the Hypothetical Reader. You challenge yourself.

[tag: writing]

Speaking becomes writing

"Plato initiated our negative view of the written word by arguing that writing was merely an imitation of speech... while speech was an imitation of thought. Thus writing would be an imitation of an imitation."

Andrew Feenberg: The written world. (The Written World)

Writing is speaking to the eyes rather than the ears.

Common TESL adage.

What I'm talking about is writing as a way of communication. What you must understand is that reading and writing are the same thing. When you write, you're actually communicating your thoughts. Reading is merely the reverse of the process. Why do you think it's called the written word? Writing is speaking your thoughts, while reading is listening to them or others. You can't learn one without the other. Always remember that you write what you read and read what you write"

Unknown author. Tears, Chapter Six.

[tag: writing]

Writing as a pastime?

Are weblogs evidence of writing as a pastime? Are they evidence of writing for writing's sake? Does writing-as-a-pastime surprise the writers? Or just the readers (i.e. popular media... who just don't seem to understand blogging).

Note: read this post about the accessibility of informal writing.

[tag: writing]

Half of a conversation

[Edit: this post is bollocks. Read then ignore]

Is a weblog a written conversation? I say Yes.

Weblog posts may take the form of a monologue or a soliloquy, they are however in the public arena. Being in the public arena defines them as having been written to be read. By placing his writing in the public arena the blogger is extending an invitation to hypothetical readers to comment/riposte*.

Because personal weblogs normally have only one owner the writing is regarded as being diary-like. The posts may resemble little letters to the self, and it may not appear that there is any exchange happening, between the blogger and anyone else, which would normally define a conversation. However there is indeed a second person... the potential respondee... because weblog posts are addressed to a reader. A hypothetical reader, or idealised adversary. Therefore the discourse can be regarded as a spoken discourse with one half evolving from the blogger, in written form... the other half is not manifested, and occurs within the mind of the reader. Or in the imagination of the blogger?

* I acknowledge that the blogger may not have enabled the commenting feature on his weblog, hence readers aren't permitted to comment.

[tag: writing]

Interaction, and learning

[From: How People Learn - Brain, Mind, Experience and School.
(Ed. Bransford et al, 1999)]

"Because many new technologies are interactive, it is now easier to create environments in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback, and continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge."

[From: Williams, 2004]

"Discussion and sharing experience have been identified as two of the most effective means by which adults learn".

Key concepts:
1. Sharing with other learners aids learning.
2. Interacting with technology aids learning.
3. Learning requires activity, engagement, response.

[tag: learning]

Bloggers are selfish learners

[see: Williams, 2004]

In a learning context: A weblog does not directly contribute to the learning community Knowledge Capital unless there is an RSS feed, or active commenting by fellow course participants. Blogging, by its nature, is private and so bloggers assimilate, process and reflect in private. If these assimilations are not recited in the discussion posts or chatroom conversations of the online course then the private learning of the blogger does not benefit the learning community (i.e. it is not contributing to its Knowledge Capital).

[tag: learning]

Centre of control

For those bloggers who need the interaction of readers to stay motivated, or give their blogging purpose... the Centre Of Control moves away from the blogger, to the reader.

Although the blogger is doing all the work (by providing information, or entertainment) the balance of power lies with the readers through their withholding of comments, or their failure to visit. Unless others interact with his thoughts (posts) his weblog has no meaning, for him. He is taunted by the sorry spectacle of his dreary thoughts/ideas festering in his weblog. They are sterile until they are fertilised with the comments (and visits) of other people. His Public.

[tag: identity]

Posting hesitancy

[see: Benfield, 2000]

This is a paper I read during the Digital Environments assignment, and this is a quote I want to retain, and reflect on later. I want to think about the informal writing style that the blogoshere encourages bloggers to adopt, and whether students (as bloggers, or potential bloggers) are also hesitant/nervous about writing in this medium... as they evidently are about writing in a course discussion board.

"This may mean that, for some students anyway, threaded discussions are not conducive to thinking out loud, to tossing out ideas for testing, to speculation. Students may be initially more inclined to weigh what they say, to be more 'guarded', than perhaps they would in ordinary conversation. Others may find that the time they get to reflect and compose their comments invests them with a power they don't ordinarily feel in face-to-face communication."

[tag: community]

Cyberhome

To have value weblogs only require the input of the blogger. If no-one reads them, or comments they still retain intrinsic worth in the form of a place in cyberspace where the blogger can retreat (or act out). A place owned and maintained by the blogger. A Cyberhome.

If however your weblog exists for the express purpose of being read and responded to (i.e. adoration by your public) - then lack of visitors/interaction will be de-motivating for the blogger. But nevertheless a weblog which isn't visited or responed to (however much it is desired that this happen) still retains value. An unused discussion board or chatroom, by comparison, does not.

[tag: concept]

A way of making sense of?

Weblogs are a way in which the blogger can make sense of their world? Bloggers posit questions and in so doing are cognitively organising the subject matter... trying to make sense of it. By constructing questions you can determine where the gaps in your (self) knowledge or understanding are. You unravel your world.

[tag: identity]

Limited by literacy

Original (*) weblog posts are textual evidence of the blogger's thinking. Writing will be limited by the blogger's literacy, vocabulary, imagination. You cannot write with words/ideas you don't possess.

* Original = written by the blogger, and not derived (copied) from another source.

[tag: writing]

Alone with your thoughts

A Private Weblog may offer the blogger an environment for the elegant unfolding of ideas. Ideas may subsequently evolve which would not have been possible under the glare of a public discussion, or within a public weblog (i.e. one in which commenting was enabled). Because weblog posts are indelible the blogger can feel secure that their free train of thought will not be interrupted - posts are not edited/moved/deleted by a third party. So, the weblog can provide the luxury of permanence needed to ruminate in safety.

The ruminations of a private blog, will swirl in ever decreasing circles until you reach your conclusion. They are safe from the rude intrusions of Readers Who Comment. Readers can look, but not touch.

[tag: concept]

Weblogs... The Fear

Q: What is The Fear of weblogs for the Extrovert, and the Introvert?
A: Extrovert: no-one will read his posts?
The Extrovert desires adoration.
A: Introvert: no-one will understand his posts?
The Introvert wants attachment.

Perhaps. However, if we apply the dictum "The opposite to love is not hate, but indifference" then things look quite different.

The Extrovert instead would fear having their entries read... and the reader subsequently walking away, indifferent, unaffected, bored. Their quest for adoration would therefore be cruelly rejected.

The Introvert on the other hand would fear that their thoughts, ruminations, musings would not be read... that they are instead alone, a captive within their own head without attachment to other people.

[tag: personality]

All things to all people

The weblog becomes what you want it to be? The extrovert believes that he will be adored, the introvert hopes that he will form an attachment?

When the weblog entries are written all things are equal: the entry goes live... and people may or may not read it... people may or may not form some sort of attachment to it. The weblog is all things to all people because it can be (regarded as) public or private... i.e. it can be used as a rumination, or a communication. It depends on what the blogger believes (hopes) it to be.

Ultimately it fulfills an innate need to be heard, to be listened to, and for our private thoughts to be shared (and either adored, or an attachment made to).

[tag: personality]

2 - Who is The Reader?

There is a self-consciousness when writing a blog - because we all think about who The Reader might be.

For the Extrovert this could be quite stimulating, perhaps even sexually so, to have their thoughts observed, read, revered. The extrovert pushes their thoughts into the web? The Introvert perhaps, rather than actively push their thoughts out - they instead uncouple themselves from them... and let them float into the public arena? The Introvert focuses on the written word (in the present), and blocks out their destination? The Extrovert uses the written word to bring the destination closer to himself (focuses on the future)?

Indeed I recall reading somewhere that Introverts focus on the past, whereas Extroverts focus on the future.

[tag: personality]

1 - Who is The Reader?

Who is the weblog Reader?

1. the third person
   
2. God**
   
3. a God
   
4. an accidental tourist
   
5. the confessional
   
6. oneself**
   
7. Hope**
   
8. Faith
   
9. a sponge
   
10. a brick wall
    
11. a voyeur

**my preferences

[tag: concept]

The Unwritten World

In a text-based environment, the unsaid, unexplained, poorly-worded - leave gaps in our understanding. And misunderstandings, and confusion, and uncertainty - in its wake. These missing words (i.e. the words needed to provide clarity) can assume proportions greater than those words which were written. The Unwritten World is limbo.

[tag: writing]

Environment & personality

We are each complex and multi-faceted, with a wide repertoire of possible responses to any given stimuli. We respond differently to different stimulus. Is it reasonable to assume that we have a large number of personalities to draw from, to cater for the different environments we find ourselves in. My guess is that those people who struggle with the diversity of the virtual world are those who's personalities are less plastic. Hence they respond to the face-to-face world in a limited (though possibly effective) way.

[tag: personality]

Multiple online personalities / facets

Barbelith wiki entry on fictionsuits:

"actively encouraged using multiple fiction suits on the board as a way of presenting different aspects of yourself without worrying too much about the contradictions".

Similarly AOL invite you to create an online personality by choosing wallpaper, icons, smileys and sounds.

"Once you've chosen what you want, you have a Personality. You can create additional personalities as you choose.".

Being online liberates opportunities for expressing the multiple facets of your personality. You can adopt a new personality by changing your name (Barbelith) or your online appearance (AOL). These separate facets of your personality are referred to by Sherry Turkle as multiple selves: 'the Internet is redefining human identity, as people explore the boundaries of their personalities and adopt multiple selves.'.

When online a distinct facet of your personality can become an entirely distinct online personality... in other words... a distinct online self.

[tag: personality]

We are who we pretend to be

[from: Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Sherry Turkle: Life on the Screen)]

"we are dwellers on the threshold between the real and virtual.... inventing ourselves as we go along"
"... the self is constructed
"... you are who you pretend to be"

When writing in your weblog you create a self of your own choosing. Your entries may highlight events/thoughts which reinforce the You you wish to project to your readers. Likewise your omissions hide those bits you wish to keep to yourself. These selective highlights/omissions may effectively distort The Truth. However the truth, from the perspective of an individual, will always be distorted... because we can only ever be subjective... and this implies seeing things through the lens of Our Own World View.

[tag: identity]

Your past is plastic

The following quotes remind me that your past (in the blogging sense) is not only what you remember, but what you choose to write... and subsequently edit. A history which relies on memory and subjectivity will be defined by the mood of the writer at time of writing, and limited by your vocabulary (you can't say what you don't have the words to say it with).

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.
Peter Berger

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel Butler

People have always re-written their personal histories. Examples are creative writing of CVs and lonely hearts ads, and the creation of an entirely new history when you move country... you can become a new person.

[tag: identity]

Learning style/approach

A learning approach must not be confused with the context-independent learning style.

[tag: learning]

Writing: what and who?

[see: Feenberg 1989]

Recent years have seen the proliferation of remedial writing courses in colleges, and the gradual decline of the childhood pastime of reading for pleasure. Feenberg states: in this context CMC seems to promise that writing will once again become a universal form of expression. Who will be writing though? And what type of writing will they be doing? Will the formal writing be done by an ever-decreasing few, or will there greater adoption of informal writing, in informal contexts?

I wonder though, given the rendered-down vocabulary of texting, the informal writing style of email, and the conversational writing style of weblogs that there will indeed be a shift towards more writing... but a less formal writing in which the message is more important than any other factor?

[tag: writing]

When collaboration works

[see: Guzdial 2002]

Courses where collaboration work place a large emphasis on discussion. Might it be sensible then to introduce online collaboration *after* students have become comfortable with using a discussion board. This might be the first step in promoting collaboration (being used to communicating online with your peers) and then move on to a collaborative exercise.

The Guzdial paper mentions Cohen's literature review on collaborative learning: open-ended, ill-structured problems tend to encourage productive collaborative learning. Furthermore when there is more than one answer to a question it is easier to collaborate.

[tag: community]

Self-reports are inaccurate?

[see: Coffield 2004]

Important to remember that self-report inventories are not sampling the behaviour of learners but of their impressions of how they learn, impressions which may be inaccurate, self-deluding or influenced by what the respondent thinks the psychologist wants to hear.

[tag: learning]

F2F vs online

[see: Dewar & Whittington 2000 and Maldonada 2001]

Maldonada paper: In CMC the gender roles are similar to F2F. Women tend to support, males tend to confront. Males write longer messages, more frequently, in a critical way and use more sarcasm. Women write shorter messages but express more doubts, suggestions and gratitude. Dewar and Whittington compared the type characteristics of Lawrence with those of F2F. The online participants identified with the F2F characteristics. Note to self must read this bit of the paper again.

So, F2F the personality type characteristics are the same as online (Maldonada), and the gender roles are the same (Dewar & Whittington).

[tag: personality]

Have strategies evolved?

[see: Livingood 1995]

Introverts readily adapt to using computers as a communications tool. This paper is quite old - 10 years. I wonder if things were different then... in that the people who were attracted to Internet communications were those who in part were escaping traditional communications (F2F and phone). They were attracted to the level-playing-field element of the Internet in which their voice could be heard without interruption, and they could pause to gather their thoughts before replying. However now, as per Whittington & Dewar 2000, users of online communications, irrespective of their personality type, have learnt (or been encouraged to) adapt to the requirements of online communication. This means that extraverts use it as much now as introverts... but extraverts ignore how at odds it is with their communication style and instead use it to communicate with lots of people, and to be social... communicate socially with more people? So online communciation strategies have evolved over the last 10 years?

[tag: personality]

Questions about Introverts

[see: Livingood 1995]

Introverts get their energy from quiet thought and introspection. How does this apply to weblogs? Will Introverts prefer them, to Extraverts? I suspect it will depend on whether the weblogs are made public (extraverts) or not (introverts).

In the US Introverts are a minority - 25-30% of the population. I wonder whether more Introverts go to University? i.e. the education system favours Introverts, or that Introverts do better academically?

Introverts are computer programmers. People who crave conversation and human interaction don't last long programming computers. Certain personality types are more likely to enjoy using computers. Might this also account for why certain types are more prevalent online? Hence more likely to have a weblog or online journal... cos they use the computer/Internet a lot already... and there is a greater likelihood that they would 1. stumble across the technology and 2. keep it up. If they are not online much then they would lose interest in it... or forget about it?

[tag: personality]

Personality Types adapt to online

[see: Dewar & Whittington (2000)]

Participants were asked to comment on adaptations they made for the online environment and what strategies they developed. These are very interesting. In a nutshell: although the online environment is suggested to benefit introverts (for example) the extraverts have nevertheless found it appealing for different reasons. This also applies to the other 6 personality preferences. So folk accommodate the online environment in their own way, and according to their personality preference.

Feelers found online communication cold and impersonal, and given the choice, would choose F2F over online. The thinkers did not mention this. **Feelers demonstrated similar strategies to extraverts for dealing with this.**

[tag: personality]

Online Course = Online Community?

[see:Whittington and Dewar (2000) and Dewar & Whittington (2000)]

Two papers by Whittington/Dewar quote other folk who suggest the importance of the sociological aspects and interpersonal side of distance education. I am wondering if we should think of our online courses as online communities... in the sense that they are not just places to learn the material but places which cater for the differing needs (as per personality type) of the learners? I know that this has been said before... but I'd like to emphasise the community part of the online course.

[tag: community]

Weblogs force you to reflect?

[see: Peter Honey Learning Log]

Does keeping a weblog induce you to reflect... so that you have something to write about? Is this not the opposite to what one is encouraged to think about blogging... i.e. that it is the act of making entries in the weblog that inspires the reflective writing? This alternative view suggests that the reflection predates the entry... that you reflect as you are doing so that when the time comes to make an entry in your weblog you have something to say - rather than arrive at your weblog and then wonder what to write. Interesting angle.

[tag: writing]

Learning Styles disadvantaged?

Example One:
[see: Strategy for studying learners using advanced learning technologies]
Sensing types (MBTI) aren't well represented in HE.

Example Two:
Schools tend to inhibit Legislative thinking styles (Sternberg 1998 cited in Lin, Lui & Luan, 2001). [Note: Legislative thinkers create working rules and tend to avoid solving problems that involve following rules. Compared with Executive thinkers who follow regulations and solve problems by following rules. Judicial thinkers evaluate rules and solve problems that require comparing and analysing multiple concepts.]

Example Three:
[see: Tailoring Assessment to Student Learning Styles]
The students who will be most successful in college move from the Affective (people-oriented, something of an opposite to cognitive) toward the Analytical side.

[tag: personality]

Thinking types & Feeling types

[see: Whittington & Dewar 2000]

W&D note that Feeling types showed a clear preference for posting on the informal areas of the discussion board. They develop relationships with other research participants. The Thinking styles posted little in the informal area and confined their comments to research areas. Thinking styles attend more to ideas, and Feeling types are concerned with creating relationships.

I wonder if this should be borne in mind when thinking about how new student use or not, weblogs? Do students who use weblogs informally, socially, prior to starting university do so for the social interaction... because they are Feeling types? If these students subsequently fail to use them in an educational context is this because they have been repurposed for something other than the informal use the students equated them with? Or, might students who didn't use them socially (i.e. because they are Thinking Types?) now find them useful in a learning context, for recording ideas?

[tag: personality]

Symbolic Interaction

[see: Methodology Readings - Symbolic Interactions]

The self is the definition people create (through interacting with others) of who they are. We come to see ourselves as others see us. The self is a social construction, the results of persons perceiving themselves and then developing a definition through the process of interaction.

I wonder how this would apply to the use of weblogs? How does someone define himself by his weblog when a person is meant to define himself in response to other people? With weblogs the ownership is retained by the blogger - so the blogger is projecting outwards... only that which he wishes to project. He is defined by the blog content - which he himself wrote. It is he who determines which bits of his offline self are available to others to interact with. So, what comes back from those he interacts with is a construct... an arteface. It is as real as the blog is real. An artificial blog will result in an unreal interaction... and an unreal reflection of the Blogger Self back to the blogger. It is an experiment, a manipulation, a game. If this is what the blogger wanted or intended, then fine. If it isn't, then the conflict which arises between the real (offline) self and the online construct may cause problems with offline socialisation. A Star online may in fact be A Loser offline. Interesting.

[tag: identity]

Hypothesis

[see: Methodology Readings - hypothesis]

Working title: Student preference for new digital technologies for learning

1. Aim One: Is there a correlation between preferred learning styles and preference for weblogs/wikis?
   
2. Aim Two: Is there a correlation between preferred learning styles and preference for public/private?
   

First Thoughts - establish the focus

[see: Methodology Readings - Planning the Project]

Brainstorm:
- do students who prefer blogs belong to a specific learning style?
- why do/don't students like/not like blogs?
- what do they like about blogs?
- do they feel comfortable with technology?
- do they like digital comms (chatrooms, email, discussion boards, MSN)?
- do they find writing enjoyable?
- would they prefer blogs to be private/public?
- share with tutor, with class, with whole www?
- do you adapt quickly to new technology?
- do you learn alone, study alone?
- do you value/welcome comments?

Personality

1. 06-Sep-05: Personality cw Identity
   
2. 15-May-05: Weblogs... The Fear
   
3. 14-May-05: All things to all people
   
4. 13-May-05: 2 - Who is The Reader?
   
5. 10-May-05: Environment & personality
   
6. 08-May-05: Multiple online personalities / facets
   
7. 13-Mar-05: F2F vs online
   
8. 11-Mar-05: Have strategies evolved?
   
9. 10-Mar-05: Questions about Introverts
   
10. 09-Mar-05: Personality Types adapt to online
    
11. 06-Mar-05: Learning styles disadvantaged
    
12. 05-Mar-05: Thinking types & Feeling types

Concept

1. 06-Aug-05: Why weblogs are not understood
   
2. 05-Aug-05: Coherance across metaphors
   
3. 04-Aug-05: A metaphor works when...
   
4. 03-Aug-03: Categorising weblogs
   
5. 02-Aug-05: Sub-categorisation
   
6. 01-Aug-05: The Weblog as A Place
   
7. 23-May-05: Cyberhome
   
8. 19-May-05: Alone with your thoughts
   
9. 12-May-05: 1 - Who is The Reader?

Learning

1. 16-Sep-05: Non-specific and versatile
   
2. 10-Jun-05: Interaction, and learning
   
3. 02-Jun-05: Bloggers are selfish learners
   
4. 22-Apr-05: Learning style/approach
   
5. 31-Mar-05: Self reports are inaccurate?

Context

1. 26-Aug-05: Technorati's blogosphere
   
2. 09-Aug-05: Ease of publishing
   
3. 07-Aug-05: Why are weblogs so popular?

Writing for online

Identity

1. 15-Sep-05: Privacy of the modern individual
   
2. 14-Sep-05: The post-modern mind
   
3. 12-Sep-05: The core self
   
4. 10-Sep-05: Tagging as identity
   
5. 07-Sep-05: Online identity - evolve
   
6. 05-Sep-05: Online idenity - create
   
7. 04-Sep-05: Music & identity
   
8. 02-Sep-05: Blogger Depression pamphlet
   
9. 23-Aug-05: Why read a weblog?
   
10. 17-Aug-05: We want to be public
    
11. 13-Aug-05: Public/private continuum
    
12. 11-Aug-05: Cultural shift: private to public
    
13. 01-Jun-05: Centre of control
    
14. 21-May-05: A way of making sense of?
    
15. 04-May-05: We are who we pretend to be
    
16. 24-Apr-05: Your past is plastic
    
17. 02-Mar-05: Symbolic interaction
    

Community

1. 17-Sep-05: No culture in academia?
   
2. 13-Sep-05: Interest groups and peers
   
3. 11-Sep-05: Tagging is arbitrary?
   
4. 02-Sep-05: Photoblogging
   
5. 30-Aug-05: Academic blogging
   
6. 27-Aug-05: Theories of collaboration
   
7. 21-Aug_05: How the community grows
   
8. 19-Aug-05: How a communty develops
   
9. 27-May-05: Posting hesitancy
   
10. 18-Apr-05: When collaboration works
    
11. 08-Mar-05: Online course = online community?

Writing

1. 09-Sep-05: Serialising your writing
   
2. 08-Sep_05: That which goes unsaid
   
3. 01-Sep-05: The word 'you' can make a difference
   
4. 31-Aug-05: Prompt me a life
   
5. 29-Aug-05: A place for sycophancy?
   
6. 28-Aug-05: Bloggers know what is genuine
   
7. 25-Aug-05: What does the writer get?
   
8. 15-Aug-05: The value of the personal
   
9. 30-Jul-05: Challenge yourself
   
10. 25-Jul-05: Speaking becomes writing
    
11. 16-Jun-05: Writing as a pastime
    
12. 15-Jun-05: Half a conversation
    
13. 20-May-05: Limited by literacy
    
14. 11-May-05: The Unwritten World
    
15. 20-Apr-05: Writing: what and who?
    
16. 07-Mar-05: Weblogs force you to reflect?