This is a ClipMark that was made from an article highlighted by one of our UK Twitter EDTech colleagues. I thought it was worth sharing here on my teaching blog.
Our question was, "Where will the social controls end?"
This is a very real problem that will only escalate, as we use more and more web applications.
For instance, I don't know how to save my data from ClipMarks. If an account is canceled, do all my links and Clips to blogs die. These are important issues to discuss.
Yahoo/flickr has known about this particular culprit for a year or so.
miscreant deleted my account, just for fun. And Yahoo can’t restore it. We all know there are backup copies all over the place, but they can only recreate my account, blank.
all the people I’ve linked to are gone (I’ve spent a few hours trying to reconnect with those I can remember). Anyone who watched my photos via their contacts has lost me (and I’ve lost much of my audience).
All the titles, tags, geotags, view counts and comments are gone. All the descriptions and stories and dialog with others in is gone.
My document, my story, my part of the community, is gone.
DataPortability is a movement to create these tools where they don’t exist. I hope someone creates something for flickr soon.
Have you ever searched for a particular topic, found what seemed like a great resource, only to discover that the link is dead?
Finding dead links is a frustrating experience. There are ways to avoid that happening to your own blog postings. One way is to use the PERMALINK. A permanent link to your blog posting is made through the use of a tiny bit of code that can even a New Bee can cut and paste into their blog postings.
Permalinks stand as one of the more elusive bits of proper standardization in archiving that I will continue to develop. I believe Permalinks are as important as tags, and everyone who reads my work knows the extreme importance I place on tags and the display of tag clouds.
As per my usual course of learning a new skill, I always begin with the Help function of whatever software or web application I am using. Always remember, "Help is my Friend!" One of the first references made to permalinks was the blog post, On Permalinks and Paradigms, and I would recommend it to anyone learning to use Permalinks.
If you have had experiences with permalinks, would you share those experiences with us here in the comments?
The blog LearnMore: Library Stream by Steve Campion is a wonderful introduction to tags and clouds, and I will pass this URL on to those I think need it. I have noticed that teched people are often very informed about computers, yet sometimes lack insight into cataloging and datamining. Both of these are skills I continue to hone. I enjoy the activity of deconstruction of text to summarizing tag clouds.
One specific problem area that I am noticing as I read other people's blogs, is what seems to be a total indifference to the necessity of tags. Another major problem is their lack of tags using words found in the posting. For example, a blogger had asked us, the forum participants, to provide some teched resource information, but the words used in the posting were not those used in the tags. Because the tags were incomplete and inaccurate, they were ineffective. This caused confusion among the readers.
Recently, I noticed a forum posting that referred me to a teched blog, but the blogger had not given the correct URL for the posting referenced. After an hour of sorting through the blog titles, I finally found the posting. I don't ordinarily stick with an issue such as this, but there was a desire to share this major issue (lack of tags or even proper titles) with others. Other bloggers can learn from this experience. It is an opportunity.
Being more like a chaotic stream of consciousness, blogs do not have the organizing structure that is inherent in websites and wikis. I believe it is the responsibility of bloggers to organize their chaos through tagging and clouds.
The tag cloud is very visual, yet it is text. I believe this understanding enables a wide variety of learners to access the blog posting they want to read. Isn't that what bloggers want? Visitors...Readers....Clickers;D
Steve Campion posted a wonderful blog about a critical issue in the interactive web. Tagging is a very important skill, and I believe those who can search effectively may also tag effectively.
One of my widgets is a WIKISPACES counter that tells how many education related wikis have been provided by WikiSpaces, and I can see by the numbers that they are rapidly meeting critical mass in their endeavor to provide 100,000 ad-free wikispaces. I first learned about WikiSpaces from one of their founders who came to TappedIN last year to give us tours and provide personal support for our first wiki experiences. I had tried to make wikis before, but I find Wikispaces is more intuitively developed to enhance your development opportunities.
If you don't have a WikiSpaces wiki yet, just get one! WikiSpaces has provided over 55,000 of the 100,000 education websites, so they are GOING FAST NOW! width="120" height="60" border="0" />
Wikispaces is a great place for teachers and those who work in education to build a wiki-website-blog with a space that has no advertisements. Once you get your own education WikiSpace, you can make it as public or private as you would like.
I think wikis are great places to use as websites, and WikiSpaces is the most highly rated by the group who knows words best, the American Librarian Association. In a review of wikis, Wikispaces was recommended as the most versatile, powerful, yet easy to use.
What I like about WikiSpaces is the support you get. If you have a question, you just email the WikiSpaces HelpDesk. From my experience, I think you will get a prompt, helpful response.
This is a scientific abstract from a research group studying the effect of choosing to be associated with people who cooperate and the ways that this cooperation can encourage others to choose them.
From their research, it seems that there is some evolutionary, positive attribute for this social phenomena. It appears to glue groups, as small as a pair and as large as civilizations.
It's too bad that Nature magazine couldn't have been more COOPERATIVE and released this research as a free web article, then more of us would have access to it and could CHOOSE to learn more about Nature and its peer reviewed research mission.
Correspondence to: Lutz Fromhage3 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to L.F. (Email: lutzfromhage@web.de).
Explaining the rise and maintenance of cooperation is central to our understanding of biological systems1, 2 and human societies3, 4. When an individual's cooperativeness is used by other individuals as a choice criterion, there can be competition to be more generous than others, a situation called competitive altruism5.
evolution of cooperation between non-relatives can then be driven by a positive feedback between increasing levels of cooperativeness and choosiness6
in a situation where individuals have the opportunity to engage in repeated pairwise interactions, the equilibrium degree of cooperativeness depends critically on the amount of behavioural variation that is being maintained in the population by processes such as mutation.
important role of lifespan in the evolution of cooperation.
For those of you who read my postings, I thank you. I hope to provide a blog that contains news, information and opinion on a wide variety of issues related to teaching in our world today.
Please don't expect a narrow vision of education and people, because you WILL be disappointed. I am a technologist, not a technocrat, therefore my definition of technology globalizes the concept in my mind. It is this global vision of life, the view of the entire ecosystem, if you will, that I show through all my actions and interactions.
I view technology as the study of all that people have created to improve their ability to do something they already do or something that people want to do. Technology includes computers and software, but it only INCLUDES THESE SUBCATEGORIES with ALL the other technology that people are continuing to create.
During the last decades of the 20th century, I was shocked to learn that some people were defining technology as the study of all things computer. Think of it! In their minds, just the computer is defined as technology! This could be funny, if I were not so embarrassed for these poor limitations people exert on themselves. How could they go so far astray? How did some people lose sight of the lessons about high and low technology? Surely they don't believe low technology is related to the computer? Surely these people can't believe that the new designs, materials and applications that will send us to other planets are NOT technology?
A major challenge of the future will be to respect and collaborate with people whose work and technology some may not value, because some people don't YET understand. I am motivated by this challenge to include those who do understand and those who have yet to gain an understanding. I hope to express this collaboration through my work, including my writing.
An important aspect of my search for the inclusive, collaborative nature of education is expressed through my blog design. I think you can see it in the components, the technology, that I add to my blog, not just the postings. My conjecture is that it's easier to include than it is to exclude.
Exclusion takes a lot of work. Right away, a person must exert great effort to remember their exclusionary categories. Exclusion, in my opinion, is a fool's endeavor that leads to limiting groups that should experience the exponential growth qualities expressed within inclusive, interactive, collaborative groups.
Exclusion belittles all, those who dish it out and take it. Practice exclusion at your own peril. Let's don't belittle!
Have you ever heard the old saying, "The sky's the limit?" When that saying was created, it referred to the fact that nothing, no idea, no person and no event should be underestimated or trivialized. Now we know that the sky is not the limit, so I suppose we need new sayings to express the limitless nature of people's abilities and imaginings.
We also need complete paradigms for the way we include others in our worldview, just as we need complete definitions of technology. How will our culture and society grow and develop in such a way that we encourage inclusion, collaboration, across racial, political, educational and personal barriers? This is part of the never-ending story, and people cannot afford to limit themselves. Limitations, exclusions, create atrophy within a culture which leads to its stagnation, and in the end, its gradual, whimpering demise.
I don't believe it is time to say our culture is withering away, but I can see exclusionary forces, especially among leaders in education, government, business, religion, and the sciences. These exclusionary forces can detrimentally affect our growth as people in this world today.
Unintentionally, these exclusionary thinkers may wall off, exclude, the very ideas from the outside that may save those who believe they have all the answers. Humility is also a part of the inclusive nature of societies. I know that humility is often in short supply, but we, especially teachers, must practice it.
For the main reason to practice humility, to be humble, remains our frailty, our innate ALONENESS...the fact that we will NEVER really know what others are all about...their hopes, dreams, knowledge and fears that prompt their motives which steer their actions.
By including, engaging and enjoining those we don't understand, we help ourselves learn and begin to understand. These understandings develop responses that encourage us as we support ourselves, our families and our societies in an honorable manner. Isn't that a commendable basis for education?
clipped from news.bbc.co.uk
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