We have a couple spaces set up in SCoPE which, in addition to Special Interest Groups (SIGs), were meant to accommodate ongoing conversations. They've gradually changed over the past 2 years and now are in desperate need of attention!
1. Kaleidoscope started out as a general place for ongoing conversations. We have the SCoPE suggestion box in there, and an "anything goes" forum for, well, anything. Plus we have the standard introductions and help forums. None of these are used much. I have wondered if blogging activity has replaced the ongoing conversations that used to take place in communities (including mailing lists)
2. Periscope provides a lens on what SCoPE members are up to outside of the boundaries of the community environment. We have SCoPE member blogs feeding in there, info about conferences, and miscellaneous stuff left over from when this space was called the community library. Again, it needs attention! And perhaps needs to be merged with Kaleidoscope.
Special Interest Group spaces are always a possibility -- for example we could organize a Web 2.0 space for the ongoing discussions about using those tools in education. Would that be useful?
It think it would be really interesting to experiment with facebook and twitter a bit. We do have a SCoPE facebook group, started in early June. It now has 27 members mostly through people noticing that their friends have joined. I have to say that I'm enjoying myself in facebook. People tend to get pretty kooky in there! But there are also some good discussions. Derek's suggestion for a Q&A type of forum made me think that maybe we could be using the "question" application in facebook.
Twitter is also a good way to get a question answered, although I haven't used it much myself. Does it make sense to have a scope twitter account? I created one just in case! http://twitter.com/scope_community
Anyway, I'm packing way too much into on forum post. If we make some progress on how to accommodate ongoing social chats, musings, Q& A and sharing in SCoPE then it will make the issue of how to manage our resources seem like a walk in the park! :-)
I blog, I have a wiki, I subscribe to 92 RSS feeds, I'm in Facebook, I twitter, I just started a Ning community for a project at work, I have three email accounts and I'm trying to get back to being actively involved in SCoPE. Somewhere in all of that I want to cycle and spend time with my loved ones.
I like that we're trying out new things for our ever growing community, but will it end up being too much?
I like that we're trying out new things for our ever growing community, but will it end up being too much?
I know what you mean ... I've not got into Twitter, but I do have a blog, mirror it via Eduspaces/ Ex.plode.us / have been using a couple of Ning communities in the past. I've also got an account on Facebook, though am more or less totally inactive there, as I just don't particularly like it. Perhaps, though, I'd better start joining some communities!
Emma prefers the Elgg interface, and likes Eduspaces.net. I've also been a member for a long time but haven't been very active.
So much going on! I tend to create accounts and try out new stuff when it comes on board but like Heather, wonder if it's all just too much for us to think about the SCoPE community extending into these other venues. And Emma points out that there is probably more value in us joining larger communities such as Eduspaces than for us to integrate Elgg into our Moodle site. I wonder the same about the Web 2.0 discussions. Do we need a special interest group in SCoPE, or should we pop on over to College 2.0 (for example) for those discussions?
One problem is that it seems the more you jump around the less you feel that you're accomplishing something. Does anyone else feel that way? Also, there is a duplication of accounts, profiles, etc. I've started to look into Openid which solve that problem. Has anyone gone down the openid path?
And of course the question remains, do we need a "space" for our social chats and musings? The idea to post our upcoming f2f conferences and events we'll be attending is great. There are many occasions where people have an idea, announcement, new tool, job posting, event, etc that they'd like SCoPE members to know about...
I'll do a little work over the next couple of days to try to bring some of this together. I'm wondering if we can pull ongoing conversations/sharing into a single space on the SCoPE site, and we can link to all of the other venues where SCoPE members are hanging out. The important design consideration is that it shouldn't take more than half a minute to figure out where to post something.
Okay, I'll get busy sketching out a space! Keep brainstorming everybody!
Funny you mentioned OpenID, my letter from Sun came today and here is there information on it.
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_docs/idmgmt/newsletter/0707feature.html?cid=920929
and some other links:
http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/softwareinfrastructure/2007/05/suns_openid_programme_definite_1.php?cid=920929
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/sun_supports_op.html?cid=920929
http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/archives/2007/05/07/openid-at-work/?cid=920929
http://www.sun.com/software/products/directory_srvr_ee/get.jsp?cid=920929
Bev Ferrell
Is it always necessary to log in to reply to a message received from the forum? When I hit the reply link at the bottom I have to come back this way and if i use the regular email reply in gmail it only goes to the person who sent the message or else I get
Do not reply to this email <noreply@moodle.elinc.ca>
I am still learning to use Scope Moodle in my spare time. and the spelling checker for these messages seems to be eluding me.
While I am at it..Since you asked about the future, instead of running off after each new technology in the forums, how about slowing down and doing some real uses that are documented for effectiveness and research and see if they are really working. Web 2.0 has some new options, but not everyone can afford the technology to keep up with everything. Using what we have more effectively before we adopt something else seems to me to be an option we should consider. The extreme emphasis on text messaging and audio uses in the last two or three years has me wondering if anybody is ready the research and or determining the effectiveness of the methodology with the strategies for both teaching and learning.
Ex:
http://www.sloan-c.org/effective/details2.asp?ACC_ID=75
No proof of long term retention or real figures, but its a start.
Bev
And spell checker! This has come up before and I have to admit that I completely forgot about it! I use Firefox which has a built in spell checker built in. A spell checker is an extra install alongside Moodle that we can do though. I'll put in a request.
Sylvia
I used to get confused with the email - and how to reply to everyone.
Tracking unread messages.
The problem that I have when I've got it set to send me the messages is that the option to track unread messages doesn't seem to work. It only seems to highlight those it's not sent me as an email as being new.
My way of working is generally to see that I've got several messages in my inbox, but to come here to read them, rather than reading them in Gmail. (Which stops me doing the wrong thing with the replies!)
I'm therefore of two minds. The email notifications are really handy (especially when a new discussion is starting & I'd forgotten), but a bit of a nuisance when I can't find out which are the new messages once I get to the board. I could, I know, switch to sorting the messages by date, but I prefer the nested view, as I can see all the messages, and who answered what.
Spelling
I too use the spell checker in Firefox, IE users might like to have a look at IESpell, as that lets you check your spelling in any text entry box.
Warm hugs, BJ Berquist
bjb@tappedin.org
there is a duplication of accounts, profiles, etc. I've started to look into Openid which solve that problem. Has anyone gone down the openid path?
I've got accounts with more than one site that offers an OpenID service. The problem that I have with it at the moment is that I can't merge an existing account on site A with the login I have for site b, if they're both open ID enabled.
What I'd like & I've no idea if it's on the "to do" list at OpenID, is to have a service where I can create one "standard" account. I'd then like to be able to associate that with accounts on other sites - so that I then would only have to remember one login/password, rather than trying to remember which ID & which password I have for a particular site. It would be so much easier just to have one (or maybe two - one work, one social) main IDs, and use that.
To add to the "wish list"; I'd like it to be able to maintain the basic information about me, (e.g. name, where I work etc), but for me to be able to tailor the exact details for each site.
Elgg lets me define who can see which bit of information (through the groups/ communities), but what it won't do is to enable me to have different versions of the same information listed for different groups. e.g. if I was joining a social group - who like walking, the fact that the highest mountain I've climbed is Mt. Toubkal could be of interest; however, a work group who are Flash builders would probably be more interested to know my expertise [or not!] in Actionscripting.
If OpenID were able to do something along the lines of bringing in the basics & letting you add the details for particular sites, then that could be useful, I think.
Now that I think of it, one of the things I like about Twitter is that as HTML, it is searchable by Google and therefore accessible by anybody. Facebook and SCoPE unfortunately are not. I realized this when I decided to blog about our rich conversation here, yet since nobody else outside this community can see it and I did not want to copy and paste all of this without permission, I realized nobody else will directly benefit from this outside our own group here.
Perhaps this is the biggest challenge facing educators right now--how to manage content for a public that does not have the rights to access it?
BTW, on Twitter I am JeffreyKeefer: http://twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer
Welcome newcomers and latecomers. This is one special aspect of SCoPE seminars, I think -- that there are no obligations. You can enter the discussion if and when you feel compelled.
This discussion on how we arrived at, and now try to manage, "friend" overload is fascinating. John's observations/question about identity have sure given us food for thought. As we are stretched across so many different places and surrounded by so many people what happens to our identity? And, to share Colby's confession, are we all regularly falling short of people's expectations because of overload? I let things fall off my plate on a regular basis. I can't help it and I'm kinda getting used to it. Aack! That's bad!
I share Diane's attraction to facebook because it is energizing but also because you can lasso the people you want to pay attention to. Probably the easiest definition of "friend" in this context is someone we are interested in. The only intrusion I find in facebook is when the top X is posted for people in my network pops up. SFU is such a huge network that it doesn't mean anything to me that the top 5 songs are... Other than that, I've managed to completely control what I see and I don't even know about others.
So where am I going with this? Here are a couple elements that seem important for the SCoPE community. Are we achieving this?
Control
How to control our interactions, encounters, workload, demands on our time? It seems important to find our own strategies, but at the same time we want to allow for serendipity and incidental learning.
Connections
Jeffrey mentioned wanting to blog about the conversation here, and make those connections for himself and also for others. I would like to do the same with a question being answered right now in facebook. BTW, these SCoPE discussions ARE wide open (no login required), so you can link to posts from your blog.
Sylvia, what a wonderful summary you have provided us.
I tried to link to this discussion again just now (having first logged off), but the system asks me to log on before I can see anything. Is it different with you or others?
I use firefox & have it set so that popup boxes come up as tabs. When it wants me to login (e.g. if I paste http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=845 into a browser window after logging out), the login tab is behind the one that I'm on.
Could it be that if you have got your browser to save login details, then you don't realise it's logging in?
Jeffrey; not being a twitterer, can people opt to have their twittering not searchable, or is it automatically? From my own point of view, it wouldn't bother me if these sites were visible; I tend to treat even logging in sites as public ones in terms of what I say, but I know that others have different policies. However, I'm not really into twitter. It's not me.
Yes, Twitter posts are available to anybody. Google indexes them, so it is a good way to assist building an online presence.
On the flip side, it is easy to post to Twitter (which is also referred to as a microblogging application, since you post to the Internet like you do with your own blog), and people at times say things they may not ordinarily say if given more time to consider it.
I started to get into Twitter since I can post via the web, my phone, my blog, etc., with the knowledge that everybody can access it.
For what it's worth, I use Firefox, and though it remembers the passwords, I still have to click the buttons to get it to actually login.
I double checked the configuration and everything looks right:
autologinguests: Yes
The means visitors are logged in as guests automatically when entering courses with guest access
opentogoogle: Yes
If you enable this setting, then Google will be allowed to enter your site as a Guest. In addition, people coming in to your site via a Google search will automatically be logged in as a Guest. Note that this only provides transparent access to courses that already allow guest access.
Hmmm, it's a head scratcher! I'll explore moodle.org as well to look for answers.
I have a problem with allowing forums to be open to Google or other search engines..Why..because my email address is out there now and I am getting more and more spam that is using my ID, to address me personally in the spam.
A search on Google using Scope and my name brings up my profile page and logo:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=beverley+ferrell+%2Bscope&btnG=Search
I found it without using Scope in the search.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=beverley++ferrell&btnG=Search
One day my messages from one of the scope forums, including my email address were appearing on the open web.
I noticed that Flickr is also exposing my ID when I add a picture to favorites:
http://www.google.com/search?q=phoenixziaco&hl=en&start=10&sa=N
and Yahoo is exposing my profile with my ID, so its easy to spam the Yahoo email box.
(There are a couple of other folks out there who spell their first name like mine).
Social software can be inclusive, but it can also cause more identity theft and phishing issues. We have to make decisions and right now, I delete about 200 spam messages and >100 unread messages a day because of overload. We have to make choices to avoid information overload.
http://www.google.com/Top/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Information_Overload/
I have come to rely more and more on searching for what I need when I want it and to cut out many groups to "read only."
Bev Ferrell
Bev raised the issue of having email addresses exposed to the world. If anyone else is concerned about this here in SCoPE there is an email display option setting in your SCoPE profile:
1. Hide my email address from everyone
2. Allow everyone to see my email address
3. Allow only other SCoPE group members to see my email address
#3 does not include "Guest"
On day I'll need to analyze why I'm spared from spam. I have several email addresses, all completely exposed, and between email forwarding (sometimes twice, and in once case redirected from) and gmail I normally only need to delete a couple spam emails out of hundreds each day.
That reminds me, a suggestion I received for a SCoPE seminar awhile back was Time Management for Educators. I'll add it to the list!
2. Allow everyone to see my email address
3. Allow only other SCoPE group members to see my email address
What's the default? As far as I know, I've not reset it, and I've got it set to option 3.
(Re. your lack of spam; lucky you! Could your ISP be stopping it? We have a spam stopper in the University & I had it stopped temporarily. The amount of spam getting to me shot up. Needless to say I re-enabled it quickly!)
... and even if you choose (intentionally or otherwise) to expose your email address to the world, moodle employs a mechanism which hopefully should make it harder for spammers to harvest email addresses from SCoPE user profiles. I don't know how effective this mechanism is in practice, but have a look at the source of the user profile page - the email address is obscured. For example, my email address in the source of the user profile page looks like this:
przemyslaw@stencel.inf
(just a short note from a lurker from the other side of the world. BTW, I greatly enjoy reading SCoPE discussions and learn heaps from them - big thanks to all of you :-) If only I could participate more often..., but you know, it's a time management issue :-))
- People would not change the subject heading
- Reply would be used at times when a new thread would be better
- The entire body of earlier messages would be included in the reply
- Many posts would include email signatures, quotes of the day, requests for pledges, announcements, disclaimers, and all those other things people add to their email (Oh, I left out "sent from my Blackberry"!)
- Out of office auto-replies would become an issue
- Posts would end up in the wrong forum because people would use reply to add unrelated messages, like conference announcements (unlike a mailing list or group, SCoPE has many different forums by topic)
- It can be problematic for people who use more than one email account, or more than one email client (i.e. I can't reply to a yahoo group from gmail unless I change the email address associated with the yahoo group to my gmail account. Small matter but it can be confusing if you don't understand why the message is being rejected.)
I know that initially I made the error of replying to an email & realising that it was only going to one person; do many people find that they don't discover that and/ or forget? If so, could the footer be altered so that rather than saying "To add your reply via the website ... "it says something along the lines of "If you reply to this message in your email client, just the sender will get it, if you want to reply to the whole group go to.."
I'm not sure about some of your other points. From what I have seen, it's often staff who tend to start new threads when it's drifted too far, where as others just carry on in the existing thread.
I do see that lack of cutting etc., could be a problem.
I note that Beverley was thinking about the difficulty replying via email - by a comparison to Yahoo! groups. I tend to see Moodle as an improvement on WebCT - when I have to login to see the messages in the first place. At least with Moodle I can read the messages & decide if I want to answer, then login if needed.
Looking at it as a listserv alternative, then, yes, I can see that having to login is a pain.
Final point: Re. the auto-replies. Personally, they don't bother me. I just delete them. However, as I know they drive some people round the bend, I tend to direct all my lists etc., to gmail - which I don't put an auto-reply on, and then I can enable it on my work address, without having to remember to unsubscribe from everything. The delete button in gmail is very useful, though, after a holiday!
From Re: social software for deeper discussions by bronwynh on Monday, 3 September 2007 10:30:00 p.m.:
I have recently decided to spend more time with real flesh and blood, physically accessible friends and to ring fence my virtual networks as the number i belong to is taking up more and more time and impacting on my domestic harmony and peace of mind. I wonder if anyone else is feeling the same?
I won't e-mail you next time I need to talk to you Bron: I'll phone!! I'm sure most of us hqve done something like this sometime . . .
2. There is a lot of wisdom scattered over these last few posts here, to do with managing our relationships and our lives, habits, best tools, purpose, focus, goals and meaning.
3. And an aside, the Dark Side of social networking software . . .
We've had some comment on Quechup - which now has scores of angry posts in the blogosphere because of their e-mail invites that get sent.
I got this message today, with x x x being an old address of mine:
Dear Derek,
Someone researched your reputation on Rapleaf by searching " x x x ".
To view (or update) your profile, check out:
http://www.rapleaf.com/pub/Derek-Chirnside
Even though your profile is incomplete, the person who searched you found some basic reputational information on you. At Rapleaf, you can find such information as age, location, history, social network links, and more on over 60 million people.
-Your friends at Rapleaf.com
www.rapleaf.com
4. And Sylvia, I did notice you didn't post, I assumed I had the formal end-date for this conversation wrong. :-) Thanks once again.
-Derek
Isolation and Facebook<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I've been thinking about social networks role with people who have issues of isolation. Sometimes it is easy to assume that our preferences/ability for social contact are universal.
Single Parents
Single parents often feel intense isolation because they are housebound. Once their children are in bed, they are free to socialize but are restricted by four walls, a lack of finances and parenting responsibilities.
People with Disabilities
Pain, fatigue and physical limitations reduce peoples' willingness to socialize in or out of their home. Facebook allows you access with people where you can control time.
Distance
Empty nesters, employment changes, families in different states, old friends, new friends, all the connections that disappear without contact. I joined Facebook because my daughter lives 300 km away and she wanted me to know what she was involved in. Whenever I feel lonely and can't telephone, I look at her profile and am reminded of how wonderful she is
. I've heard stories of soldiers meeting their wives and girlfriends in Second Life so they can dance, go for coffee or build their dream house.
Shift workers and night owls/earlybirds
I'm a serious nightowl, wiped out after work and full of life at 11PM. I used to sit and curse my isolation at 2:00 AM, now I love logging on and seeing what people are doing.
Re: social chats, musings and social software
I find that I'm getting drawn into Facebook more and more. I don't particularly like it; in particular I don't like the fact that while I can draw outside things in, I can't get information from Facebook outside.
There are other things that I'm not so keen on (e.g. as far as I can tell, I have to check out each discussion board to see if there are new messages; I don't have control over what appears on my home page [I have little interest in what the popular TV shows are...]), these - and other reasons are why I'd not choose to use Facebook. However, increasingly friends are using it; thus I use it [must as - and yes I *know* this isn't the best analogy - I used to go into the smoking room at work, because that's where my friends were]
I'm currently at ALT-C in the UK, and Facebook has been discussed on several occasions. Some lecturers have gone to join their students there (generally by invitation), others have felt that students see Facebook as 'their' space, not one they'd specially welcome lecturers (guess it depends on the lecturer/student relationship!)
[Lecturer - UK usage = Faculty in US]
Here's something that struck me this morning. You can't read these discussions without logging in. No RSS. No way to bookmark or flag individual posts, no email subscriptions, no advanced search...unless I'm missing something. These are all the features we have grown to appreciate in an online discussion forum. I wonder, will Facebook discussions will fizzle because of this?
Sylvia, this is exactly one of the reasons I am not particularly active in Facebook. I like RSS and email-based feeds (which is how I saw this post of yours), rather than having to log on to a portal and look for my information (remember aol about 10 years ago?). I don't like that people cannot access the posts unless they are members, so Googling something will not even indicate it exists. If anything, this closed world of Facebook and its clones will not necessarily build an open community, but rather one for those already in-the-know. This is a challenge if we eventually want a wide audience to be able to access and build upon our work.
BTW, Facebook is commonly blocked from corporate firewalls, as it still has the reputation of being a social/drinking/college/dating site. I can make a business case to have SCoPE open; they won't consider Facebook.
I have recently decided to spend more time with real flesh and blood, physically accessible friends and to ring fence my virtual networks as the number i belong to is taking up more and more time and impacting on my domestic harmony and peace of mind. I wonder if anyone else is feeling the same?
You may be interested in an article I read recently. here are a couple of excerpts:
"Jason Calacanis wishes he could be your Facebook friend, but he just can't. ....Calacanis now has several thousand friends, with more requests streaming in daily. He's tired. So on his blog this summer, Calacanis, 37, declared a Facebook moratorium. In the future he'll outsource his friend management to an intern."
"Ogheneruemu "O.G." Oyiborhoro ....is the George Washington University junior who holds the school's title of most Facebook friends -- 3,456 and counting." BUT who is the friend who helps him find an apartment....not his facebook buddies.
See:
An Unmanageable Circle of Friends Social-Network Web Sites Inundate Us With Connections, and That Can Be Alienating
By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 26, 2007; M10
Bron
My current view is that I don't accept friendship from those I don't know (often virtually, rather than for real); unless their group of friends include those that I know (generally work related) and trust.
I've seen quite a few articles in the press recently (UK press) discussing the nature of friendship. Often, as you point out, "friends" isn't what many of us would call "friends" - often they'd barely be "acquaintances". I'm not sure if I'm an anti-social git, or old fashioned, or simply boring, but I can't see the point in calling someone a friend unless I'm really interested in what their comments are likely to be on what I write, and equally that I'm likely to be interested in them.
I've not seen research, though I'm sure it's been done, looking at any links between numbers of "friends" in Facebook/etc; real life & age...
I couldn't agree more. I was talking about this yesterday with some colleagues. I have been using Facebook for just a few months and come from a time when making friends was all about meeting people, chatting, finding out about each other and over the course of time friendships, whether lasting or not, might emerge. Yesterday I created a new email adddress for my Facebook messages since I could no longer stand the messages interupting my everyday life. I felt as if Facebook was getting hold of me and for all the wrong reasons. I couldn't help but feel the need to check the emails immediately when they arrived... which led me to viewing the 'total number of friends' displayed against each of my 'friends' list and checking their wall to view conversations with their other so called friends. Felt like eavesdropping but human nature drives you to do crazy things. It can so easily make you feel out of place, as if inadequate, to watch their 'friends' total rise whilst yours remain pretty static. And who are these people? Are they really your friends? And what is everyone talking about? Meaningful things? Are we really using it to share our real selves or are we using it to project our public persona? I don't think it's just an age thing, but please chip in if you think that's not the case.I know that software such as this has it's place, but at the moment it often feels like a promotional networking area, hence the term 'friend' can then be completely inappropriate. And I definately believe that it can 'impact on your domestic harmony and peace of mind' and that's something I'm working really hard at at the moment in my 'real' life to attain so 'virtually' I don't want to drain any more of my energies.
Jacqui
The ability to limit your profile settings for some people is, for me, the key to managing the 'real friends' vs aquaintances issue - not that it's always easy to decide who should be on which list.
Far from it being draining, I have found it a very energising place to belong to. being able to connect to a lot of people at once means that I don't feel guilty about not being in touch more often. There is a sense, for me, of constant presence and connection.
I love getting messages in response to my status updates and seeing what other friends and colleagues are doing, it feels a bit like being in a common room and overhearing someone say they are going to "X" for the weekend, or about to paint their house.
It has just enabled me to reconnect with a former student (from 26 yrs ago!) that I was very fond of but never kept in touch with, we are geographically close so plan to stay in touch and meet up.
I'm 51, so not one of he young things collecting 'friends' - there is only one person in my friend's list that I am not comfortable calling a friend, and the only reason she is there is because she is the daughter of a friend of my husband - I've never met her, but my husband suggested she add me <sigh>.
re. the deeper discussions issue - well deep discussions require safe spaces. if a Facebook group is deemed to be safe by the members then there is no reason why deep discussion can't happen there in the same way it might in any other digital format.
it has also sparked a lot of real life discussion about the nature of friendship - certainly in my lab as well as on here - which can only be a good thing :-)
Diane
I would also like to agree with the last few postings. There seems to be something almost overwhelming about the amount of on-line data and 'link-ups' we are dealing with on a daily basis. I wish I could find an efficient mechanism for sorting, storing and retrieving it all.
Sadly, I seem to end up frantically trying to get through the bare essentials and important e-mails and not making enough time to read interesing information like some of the papers and links I have stored from past SCoPE discussions! I just wish I was more organised!
Best wishes E.A.
A few years ago, I reached a point where I was receiving more than 500 emails per day - between work, academic, social and creative. Many people want answers from me, but I now regularly dump hundreds of emails per day. Because of the number of emails I receive, I have also been forced to segregate emails into separate email addresses connected to those particular areas of my work and life.
If I travel and have been offline for a few days, I simply return and dump ALL emails. Anyone close to me understands this phenomenon.
This is the reason I prefer forums to email. They give me the chance to follow discussions and participate when able. These are my personal preferences.
I think personal preferences and profiling is going to become key to finding the alignments between people and their choices for products, applications, communities. The technology is out there and slowly beginning to do this work for us.
Dunbar's number has certainly been true for me. I cannot humanly manage more than 150 social relationships ad generate any real value from them. If I were to be honest, my preferred number is more around 80. Because of the roles that I play, I have to remember 1000's of peoples names and what they do...and I fall short of their expectations regularly.
How are the rest of you handling your expanding social relationship base?
this is my first post here I believe,
apologies for having been a lurker
for quite some time. And yes, mostly
to do with similar constraints as Colby
refers to.
What to do - what I believe could happen,
is for us to become more comfortable with
letting part of our control reside in our online
avatars. While this could solve, or at least ease
some of the time and attention constraints, it
poses new questions and concerns, wrt to authenticity
and identity. Who am I when I post here in Scope?
Some of this is already implicitly happening, through
the emergence of, and rising popularity of social networks,
eg Facebook, such walled gardens enabling a better
signal to noise ratio, yet also adding a level of complexity
wrt to who owns the content, and who we are in the context
of such a social network.
- OpenID (good, but not yet integrated enough);
- different e-mail accounts, a mail for: work, forums, partner, friends and family, editorial work.
- I use facebook, but only to follow groups if I want to (I do not like it).
- ones I am home during the week: no computer linked to the internet, mobile device on for maximum 1 hour.
- a feedreader which focusses on specific tags.
- per week I mark one half day to read up on forums, articles, feeds.
It is like working in the library of Alexandria (the pre-fire era), you must let go and just be happy that all the information is centralized.
I am reading Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner. A very good read for anybody interested in qualities of the future mind and... he tells us that you just cannot control all the information out there.
We've sat on this for several months out of concern that the options we've looked at will all fail.
RSS has spoiled us.
Today Rob Lubensky came in with a blog post that pulls out one of Tia Carr Williams' contributions to the Critical Thinking Facebook group I mentioned. Now that is the kind of tid bit that makes me want to explore further, but it would be much better if readers could easily view the original, see the context, etc.
It is fascinating to follow SCoPE members' activities outside of the boundaries of the community like this though. The Technorati SCoPE bloggers fave list is a regular read for me. The URLs are pulled from the SCoPE member blogs list here. Be sure to add yours!
Anyway, shifting topics a bit, I promised to make a space for us here in SCoPE that would bring our musings and more spontaneous discussions into one space. I merged a couple spaces into one a few days ago -- Kaleidoscope -- and created a real mess! It's nowhere near BJ's vision of having mild and cookies in a warm and friendly place. I'll work on it some more to try to give it some organization, shape and atmosphere. If anyone would like editing access to play in there let me know!
How do I change my blog URL? It has changed, but I can't get back into my original post to alter it.
Incidentally, does anyone know if it's possible to change it on Technorati? I've added it as a new one, but can't find a way to update the old one to have the new url.
Sylvia
I've edited my entry (not that I could find where I listed the actual URL in the first place - but you must have found it, as it's in the list at Technorati.
Anyway, the new one is there, now.
I belong to about 43 yahoo groups and three google groups and a number of JISC mail groups, I only receive about 5 of them via email - filtered into their own folders, the rest I visit online whenI feel like a break or want to catch up. colleagues have often told me they don't know how I keep up with all of the groups I belong to - well I don't, I dip in an out of the less important ones, but I rarely feel overwhelmed as it's totally within my control when I engage and when I don't.
Diane
As an extremely busy business person, I have been able to thread many of my interests and projects into a unified communication tool with Facebook. It also has the benefit of providing a very visible arena for watching talent.
Though the discussions here on Scope are specific in content, they do not allow for ease of communication and are limited to only this group of people. For instance, if there were a Scope group on Facebook, you could reach out and build on many of the discussions here - drawing others into the discussion who might also have practical wisdom to share.
You could also explore how to seed Scope into application in many of the learning groups whose participants are active in Facebook.
The limitation of Scope is that we cannot see the contributors in the context of their expertise. With a platform like Facebook, you have that context on many levels.
While I agree with you in some ways, Colby, in some ways social applications such as Facebook are largely blocked by corporate firewalls: http://news.com.com/Poll+Half+of+employers+restrict+Facebook/2100-1029_3-6203889.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
This means that I cannot access mail and discussions sent through Facebook during the day. Accessing it only at night then tends to stunt conversation, as there may be great delays in replying (not to mention this reminds me too much of the old AOL mentatlity of everything locked within their own gates).
I never thought I would say this, but I am becoming increasingly fond of open architectures that allows for ready access in a variety of ways and without the constrictures of firewall settings.
However, I don't think that I share her level of enthusiasm for it. Over the past couple of weeks, prompted both by discussions here and outside, I've explored it more and more. I can't see myself switching from Eduspaces to it as my main social networking site, at least, not when I'm primarily using technologies for work based connections. I'd still far rather meet people for real if I want to socialise properly!
Going back to facebook, yes I have joined some groups, and read, if not taken part in, some discussions.
I can see that here we only have a limited group of people - which could be good or not depending on what you want. Equally, I see that in Facebook discussions can be public or private; again, that's useful.
I don't like the fact that it's not got a blogging tool that's easy to find, nor do I like the fact that while I can integrate external tools, it's much harder to integrate it into other tools - the lack of RSS frustrates me. That said, it's search feature is better than the Eduspaces one. I've found finding groups in Facebook easier - in Eduspaces I have to hunt rather (though they have said they're going to improve that).
So, they each have their pros & cons; at present, I'm sticking to Eduspaces, but that's not to say I won't keep checking out the alternatives (someone sent me an invitation to quechup.com today - that's not one I'm going to persue!)
In many ways, I see this discussion as very much mirroring what we discussed in the PLE discussion - that there are many tools, that we each have our own reasons for selecting the ones that we want. The difficulty comes in the integration; which, unfortunately, while Facebook makes it relatively easy to bring stuff in, it's rather harder to get stuff out (rather like WebCT makes it hard to get things out).
I've read a few blog posts recently commenting on Facebook's closed garden stance, and whether that will be its downfall or its lifeline.
social software for deeper discussions (as well as other trash)
someone sent me an invitation to quechup.com today - that's not one I'm going to persue!
Never heard of this network until today. [I'm a little out of the loop for these things] Then in the same e-mail reading session I get an invite to the same thing. Addressed to everyone in Nancy White's online facilitation list.
(http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/onlinefacilitation/message/9917)
My first thought was this: "No wonder some people build up networks quick if they invite 1509 people at once"
Here is part of the blurb . .
maintain a blog, share videos; photos, chat with other members, play
games, and more. It's no wonder Quechup is fast becoming 'The Social Networking site to be on'
But it is sort of a scam, a trap for the unwary. Do not touch this site. (IMO)
A little Googling reveals this:
http://blogs.nmss.com/communications/2007/08/no-quechup-plea.html
Quechup - a social networking site that starts each new subscription with anti-social spamming!
I'm interested in social networks and community sites, so I've joined many such services, only a few of which I actually use with any regularity. A few minutes ago, I got an invitation to Quechup and went ahead and signed up. Unfortunately, I didn't Google their name and check other people's comments in advance. [I'm just back from vacation and not thinking???] Worse, I blasted through their sign up procedure without my usual caution.
During the signup process, Quechup.com suggests it search your address book to check if some of your email contacts have already signed up as well, so as to give the networking process a head start. I've seen this before and I'm usually very suspicious, but this time I acted like a total newbie. I let them see one of my address books, in which they found only the person who had invited me. What they didn't mention is they immediately spam each of the addresses they got access to.
If you got such spam, I deeply apologize. I've been on-line for years. I should know better. I do know better! What else can I say? I'm sorry.
And this:
http://www.ibert.be/2007/07/quechup-disaster.html
The whole thing was not very user friendly so I decide to leave it for what it is. I go back to my mailbox and see about 100 out of office replies ... apparently Quechup sent out invitations to join to my complete Gmail address book :(
THIS IS NOT FUNNY!
KILL QUECHUP FOR THIS (and sorry if you got an invite, I was not meaning to send it.
Update: I'm not alone :(
How to survive the attack of the killer Quechup @ bnox.be
Quechup : NOT what social should be @ Werner.be
Quechup Sucks and violates privacy ! @ x-tend.be
Hold the Quechup @ sparehed.com
And this:
IDate Corporation Announces Official Launch Of Quechup, A Rapidly Growing Online Community And Dating Site That Merges Internet And Mobile Phone Technology
:-|
-Derek
Diane, I know what you mean by being overwhelmed. I also have countless email groups and the like, but from my experience, I would never want to log on and then have to sort through tons of posts and mail. That would deter me from wanting to log on at all, since every time I did that, there would be an overwhelming amount to process.
Interesting how there are different working styles. I suppose the important point is that whatever solutions are decided upon allow for a variety of user approaches. To force one or another may in turn alienate various populations.
- My current projects
- My future thinking towards future projects/learning - what might be of interest.
- My buddies and their activities/needs. Very important.
- Pure fun.
================================================================
[Tangential comment follows. Hit delete if you are busy]
I've also been thinking about what I dip into and how.
I am now on day 18 of a personal experiment: we've stopped getting the daily newspaper delivered. The initial reason was to provide some more focus for a son in the critical minutes between 6.45am and school, and to get some focus on planning the day for the disparate individuals who live and visit the house. But it has become more than that because of a book I have been reading: Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to Death". [He wrote "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" which was hugely influential on many of us]
His Chapter 5 "The Peek-a-Boo World" has led me to examine what I dip into each day and why.
- How do I keep up?
- What do I want to keep up with?
- What do I NEED to know?
- What do I do with what I read?
- The personal interest/work divide (which sometimes blends)
[I don't have time to converge my thoughts totally coherently and type them up. At the risk of wasting your time I'll insert a small quote from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/jog9901.html
"Only in the printed word, he states, could complicated truths be rationally conveyed. A striking example Postman gives: that the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However, the reverse is true today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any, words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of carefully-chosen soundbites" (Wikipedia)]
Also:
Plus: Neil ate with vice-president Gore, spoke to the assembly at Davos Switzerland, and was the direct influence on Roger Waters’ (the former Pink Floyd lead-singer) stunning solo album, Amused to Death, a fact which single-handedly increased the enrollment numbers at NYU’s Media Ecology program. (The New Pantagruel)
Neil Postman died in 2003. I wonder what he thought of the internet? And Youtube/TeacherTube and podcasting?
So:
a) In the internet world I have been paying attention to my RSS feeds for NEWS. In my experiment several times I have had access to the paper after checking some headlines or listening to a radio bulletin and asked myself as I flip through the paper,"have I missed anything I needed to know?"
At the moment, feeds are winning. But the information is a bit more than I can cope with.
But I would have missed some great letters to the editor, some quirky stuff . . . And some advertisements I am interested in. :-)
b) Two stories I have followed ONLY online: the teenagers who 1) hacked the Aussie internet filter and 2) hacked the iphone. I have got diverted into other stories about Owen Wilson and Mrs Clinton.
c) Yesterday I found myself with the laptop open on the dining room table during morning coffee surfing the news. OH NO!!
Have a nice weekend.
Derek, wonderful story (touching almost on autoethnography as well!). I found it ironic that you find yourself doing almost the same behavior in a different medium, which may be telling for how we are exploring knowledge management in a web 2.0 world.
BTW, I don't like paying the increasing costs for newspapers, and while I read a lot of RSS feeds (thank you, Feeddemon!), I would miss all sorts of interesting things (such as a recent article on a boutique eau de vie made in Oregon) just scanning the online headlines of the major news. I never would have clicked on that link had I not seen the color picture in the separate section of the New York Times.