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Jeff Jarvis: Public Parts

February 4, 2012 By drbexl Leave a Comment

I have this book on my desk, so was interested to see what someone else had said about it:

Martin de Saulles, principal lecturer in information management, University of Brighton, is reading Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live(Simon and Schuster, 2011). “Jarvis presents an intelligent counter to some of the uninformed fear-mongering over online privacy and shows how individuals and society can benefit from greater information sharing. His tweets and blog posts about the side-effects of his prostate cancer treatment may not be to all tastes, but he shows how the kindness of internet strangers helped him and fellow sufferers.”

Taken from Times Higher Education.

Filed Under Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Jeff Jarvis, Public Parts

Richard Sennett: Together (Book)

February 2, 2012 By drbexl Leave a Comment

I thought this looked really interesting:

Together traces the evolution of cooperative rituals in medieval churches and guilds, Renaissance workshops and courts, early modern laboratories and diplomatic embassies. In our lives today, it explains the trials and prospects of cooperation online, face-to-face in ethnic conflicts, among financial workers and community organisers. (from Amazon description).

Frank Furedi reviewed this for Times Higher Education - here’s a taster:

Today, informality and spontaneous behaviour are often regarded as a potential breach of contract by human resources departments. This formalisation of relationships is not a by-product of overzealous managerialism, but a symptom of society’s estrangement from the uncertainties associated with informality. Sennett rightly observes that “formality favours authority and seeks to prevent surprise”. Informal relations are by definition fluid and unpredictable. Precisely because such relations involve an element of give and take, their pursuit could lead to unpredictable outcomes. The reason why Sennett’s Boston workers cultivated relations of cooperation is because, through that interactive dynamic, they gained a measure of self-respect and a glimmer of agency.

Read the review here, or buy the book.

Filed Under Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Book, Co-operation, Informal Networks

“Hello Avatar” #BookReview

January 6, 2012 By drbexl Leave a Comment

10 years after The Matrix stormed the world:

More than a decade later, we inhabit a world of pervasive media and ubiquitous computing (think about the miniature computer in your pocket). We now accept as normal our engagement with virtual reality, including gaming, email, Skype and social media, and we feel more comfortable living in this world of simulation than previous generations did. Just as those living in the Matrix existed in an unreal world, we too can escape into our own fantasy worlds for as little or as long as we like. The continuing development of graphical interfaces in computing are creating ever more believable worlds; places where human features, gestures and language are being simulated successfully. “Virtual worlds” such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel or, for schoolchildren, Club Penguin captured our attention, becoming obsessions for some; places we visited when we fancied an alternative to a less-exciting reality, with personas and communities we built up over a period of time.

Read full story.

 

Filed Under Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Book Review, Hello Avatar

Book Review: Networked, A contemporary history of news in transition

September 18, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Networked Book Cover

Looks like an interesting read, reviewed by Tim Luckhurst, who wrote an article in a similar vein the other week:

In the vortex of angst generated by scandal at News International and the complicity of Britain’s political class, it is cheering to read a book that makes one feel a little more optimistic about the purposes and future of journalism. Networked hits the mark.

Adrienne Russell sets out to analyse a time of transformation in the history of journalism, from the era of professional mass media to a future of horizontal collaboration between networked citizens. Her research confirms grave shortcomings in 20th-century editorial culture, but offers reasons to hope that technology and the participation it permits can illuminate a brighter future.

Russell knows her territory and she surveys it confidently. Her comparison of coverage by US news outlets of the 1991 Gulf War with their treatment of the 2003 invasion of Iraq should become compulsory reading for students of conflict reporting. It reveals precisely why George W. Bush could not repeat his father’s trick of massaging the message, 12 years after Bush senior expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

By 2003, unidirectional top-down communication by professional journalists to a rapt audience of passive patriots was not possible. At websites such as Salon.com, through video diaries and on personal blogs, Iraqis and dissenting Americans held official orthodoxy to account. Public interest watchdogs challenged unbalanced reporting of the war. Those great beasts of US “old media”, The Washington Post and The New York Times, were shamed by critical email campaigns.

Read full story and buy the book.

Filed Under Academic Research, Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Collaboration, News, Review

Work’s Intimacy, a review in @timeshighered

September 17, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Here’s another on the wishlist!!

In a lively and compellWork's Intimacy book Covering read, Melissa Gregg examines the impact of technologies on the work and lifestyles of employees in the knowledge economy. This book covers a lot of ground in a relatively slim volume, and considers mobile working; part-time and contract working; online team interactions; the use of social networking; online branding; and the implications of work being done in the home environment.

Times Higher Education readers may see parallels with their own working lives in the examples cited, and Gregg’s observations about how we relate to work may cause readers to reflect on how information and communication technologies have impacted on their own responses to, for example, being able to work remotely and pressures to be ever connected and available.

Gregg draws on a study of 26 professionals working for large organisations in education, government, broadcasting and telecommunications who were interviewed annually over a three-year period. Their experiences of, and responses to, remote working and the use of online technologies are traced in detail throughout. Overall, a picture of expanding work boundaries is presented, but responses to this shift are mixed.

Read full story or buy the book.

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living, Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Balance, Book, Review, Workload

Digital Cultures Milad Doueihi

June 16, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

A student is reading a book. A message beeps from an iPhone. Eyes flick to the screen in curiosity. During the glance from paper to screen, an iPod continues to shuffle a soundtrack.

From screen to sound, from paper to pixels, digital cultures accompany, replace and cannibalise earlier platforms and meaning systems. In Digital Cultures, Milad Doueihi probes these accelerated movements, migrations and manifestations. First published in French in 2008 as La Grand Conversion Numérique, the book’s English-language version has not been updated. As a result, social networking is underplayed.

But while it may seem unwise to leave the text unchanged considering the rapidity of software and hardware transformation, Doueihi’s argument remains revelatory and important. He presents the diversity of digital practices and the importance of digital literacy in an increasingly complex textual environment. Moving beyond basic functional literacy, Doueihi asks how digitisation configures a meta-literacy, “of what it means to be literate”.

The book’s four sections – “Digital divides and the emerging digital literacy”, “Blogging the city”, “Software tolerance in the land of dissidence” and “Archiving the future” – align to investigate new relationships between the production and communication of knowledge and the transformations of past modes of reading and thinking.

The innovative concept created and developed throughout the book is “anthology”. Doueihi defines this as “constituted by assembling various pieces of material under a unifying cover, and for the use of an individual or a group brought together by a common interest”. Such a mode of reading is comparative, collaborative and decontextualised. A wiki-enabled form of bricolage, the “new sociability” through social networks gathers references into an innovative anthology.

Read full article.

 

Filed Under Academic Research, Digital Living, Review, Times Higher Education Tagged With Book Review, Digital Culture

Bit of a #fail by the Co-Op Bank

January 14, 2011 By drbexl 1 Comment


I was interested in this offer from the Co-Op bank, but what with being on holiday/not feeling amazingly well, I kept forgetting, so I went onto the website today (14th January 2011!), and as you can see from the screenshot above, the offer of a year’s free fees is still available (I pay fees with Barclays, who still keep my big student overdraft open, but I would like to be with a bank known for its ethical stance!). I think, oh dear, guess I have to do that by tomorrow… click on it, and the following options come up:


or

So, not only has the offer closed early, the front page advertising is still up! Not great planning by the Co-Op!

Filed Under Review Tagged With #Fail, Co-Op

Pushnote (with @stephenfry)

January 14, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Pushnote: What is it?

Pushnote is apparently “a browser add-on that enables users to leave comments on any site they visit.”

Users need to sign up for an account, download an add-on for their browser, and can then comment on sites. For example, if you visit a shopping site, much in the way of e.g. Amazon reviews, you’d be able to leave notes that others can see, as to whether this is a good deal, link to a site with better information/price, compliment a site (let’s not forget this – people are much faster to critique than compliment).

What might this do?

In a world where the morass of information on the web can be overwhelming (and, let’s face it, full of inaccuracies to catch the non-critical viewer), this gives options for feedback on sites, especially those that (shock horror) still stick to straight ‘slick marketing’, although it appears that there’s no option for the site owner to censor sites – so allowing for cyber-bullying and undeserved reputation damage. This all contributes to an argument for training people in how best to use such social media tools.

Why now?

Stephen Fry, involved in the startup since June 2010, tweeted yesterday to his 2million+ followers. Well known for causing sites to crash by linking to them from his Twitter account, there’s definitely been a buzz about Pushnote over the last couple of days, and multiple stories appearing on Google!

Have you signed up?

I have, and the following icon has been added to my browser… but currently it’s saying that I’m a “pioneer” and that none of my Facebook or Twitter friends have signed up (which I can’t quite believe!), so I have to find people by name… so far I have just followed Stephen Fry! So… I haven’t quite worked out what to do with it yet…. I tried to log onto it via my phone yesterday, but that didn’t appear to be successful, so this morning (after a reminder via a Facebook friend), I tried again…

So, if you’ve signed up for Pushnote, let me know, so I can see about some interaction! My user name is Bex Lewis.

Testing Commenting

So, clicking on that plugin link (on whatever page I’m on), gives a nice simple interface into which I can type my comment and decide whether to post that comment to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Note that Twitter I have signed up for 2 accounts and it’s not giving me an option for just one, it appears to have to go to both if I select Twitter (wonder if that will change in a later updat

e).

Now, if I return to that page, the plugin has gone green, indicating that there is a pushnote conversation available. Click on it, and the screen above reappears, and presumably allows other

s comment, and build up a conversation. I can see an interest in this, particularly in getting students to comment critically on page content (getting them to think that information is not ‘right’, not ‘fact’, and that critical thinking is required), and also for staff, who are undertaking research, to cross-comment on others interested in similar fields, and promote dialogue across institutions.

Will it fly?

Who knows, if Stephen Fry’s followers pick it up, and find it as simple to use as I have, then maybe! Once I have worked out how to find some friends there, that is… and nothing has yet appeared in my Twitter/Facebook streams…

Filed Under Digital Living, Review, Tools Tagged With Comment, Pushnote, Stephen Fry

Recommended Reading for Blended Learning?

June 14, 2010 By drbexl 2 Comments

Below appears to be the list of texts that the University of Winchester has in its library in relation to Blended (or E-) Learning, and I would be interested to know what more up-to-date texts you have found useful? I’ll be back with more links…

  • Banks, S. Lally, V. & McConnell, D. (2002) Collaborative E-Learning in Higher Education: Issues and Strategies, SPIE Publications
  • Beetham, H. & Sharpe, R. (eds) (2007) Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age : designing and delivering e-learning, Routledge
  • Bielawski, L. and Metcalf, D., (2005). Blended e-Learning – Integrating Knowledge, Performance Support and Online Learning, HRD Press Inc, Amherst, MA, USA
  • Bonk, C.J. and Graham, C.R., (2005).  The Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs, Pfeiffer, San Francisco, CA, USA.
  • Bull, J & McKenna, C (2003), Blueprint for computer-assisted assessment, Routledge Falmer
  • Burge, E. J. & Haughey, M (2001), Using Learning Technologies, Routledge Falmer
  • Conole, G. and Oliver, M.(ed) (2007), Contemporary perspectives in e-learning research: themes, methods and impact on practice, part of the Open and Distance Learning Series, F. Lockwood, (ed), RoutledgeFalmer.
  • Collis, B. & Moonen, J. (2001) Flexible Learning in a Digital World Kogan Page
  • Cross, J. (2007), Informal learning : rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance, John Wiley
  • Evans T. and Nation D. (2000) Changing University Teaching: reflections on creating educational technologies, Kogan Page
  • Garrison, D.R. (2003) E-learning in the 21st century : a framework for research and practice, RoutledgeFalmer
  • Jeffreys, M. (2001) E-learning : strategies for delivering knowledge in the digital age, McGraw-Hill
  • Koper, R. and Tattersall, C., (2005). Learning Design: A Handbook on Modelling and Delivering Networked Education and Training, Springer-Verlag,Berlin, Germany.
  • Macdonald, J. (2008) Blended Learning and Online Tutoring: Planning Learning Support and Activity Design, Gower
  • Maier, P. & Warren, A. (2000) Integr@ting Technology in learning and teaching, Kogan Page
  • Mason, R. & Rennie, F.  (2008) E-learning and social networking handbook : resources for higher education Routledge
  • McConnell, D. (2000) Implementing Computer Supported Cooperative Learning, Kogan Page
  • Murphy,D, Walker, R. & Webb, G. (2001) Online Learning & Teaching with Technology Kogan Page
  • Rice, W.H. (2006) Moodle : e-learning course development : a complete guide to successful learning using Moodle Packt
  • Salmon, G. (2000) E-Moderating: the Key to Learning & Teaching On-line, London, Kogan Page
  • Salmon, G (2002) E-tivities: the key to active online learning. Kogan Page.
  • Stephenson, J. (Ed.) (2001) Teaching and Learning Online London: Kogan Page
  • Squires, D, Conole, G & Jacobs, G (2000) The Changing Face of Learning Technology, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
  • Steeples, C & Jones, C (eds) (2001) Networked Learning: perspectives and issues, Springer Verlag

Also, what key websites would you recommend for use within the PGCLTHE programme aside from http://www.alt.ac.uk/; http://www.jisc.ac.uk/?

Filed Under Learning, Review Tagged With Blended Learning, E-Learning, Recommended Text

Fast Company: Facebook #1

February 18, 2010 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Facebook, which is just turning six, has achieved a level of maturity most wags thought would never come. Somewhere along the road to becoming the platform of choice for 400 million users in every country on earth, the company grew up. Baby photos now dot the worktables at its Palo Alto headquarters. Chefs provide free gourmet fare in the company cafeteria. And the founder, who once coded the site while dashing between makeshift offices in a beat-up car that didn’t need a key, now mingles with his 1,200 employees, recruited and supported by a real HR person, in a new 135,000-square-foot office space. “We used to stand outside of Stanford looking for engineers to help us,” laughs Chris Cox, vice president of product, and creator of the original news-feed feature.

Today, Facebook feels the way Google, Intel, and Microsoft likely did at similar stages in their own life cycles — still agile enough to invent the future, but sufficiently stable to handle some real turbulence. In fact, Zuckerberg has been studying those companies, and their histories, closely. “There are advantages to being both bigger and smaller,” he tells me. “But the cool thing is, we’re in our sweet spot now.”

Read full story.

Filed Under Review Tagged With Award, Facebook, Growth
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