First Posting

Hello Everyone,
This is the first blog that I've created and the first social networking site that I've ever visited. In fact, just yesterday I learned how to use a digital camera, how to get the pictures from the camera into the computer, then on to this site. I'm still not sure this posting will go where I think it will go - we'll see soon! As you can see from my interests, for recreation and leisure I like doing outdoor activities like canoe paddling, hiking, bike riding and yoga, so I've never taken the time to sit down at the computer and learn very much about it.

I got interested in computer technology last semester when I took my first on-line course. I found out that this is an excellent way for me to learn. It worked so much better for me than a brick and mortar classroom that I became very intersted in computer applications and want to soak up as much information as I can. This semester I'm taking three online classes: this one (which I'm actually quite intimidated by), EDTC Computers in Education and EDEA School Community Relations. When I got my first Masters' degree in 1981, I was thrilled with the new invention of correction tape placed right into the typewriter. It made typing papers so much easier! We've certainly come a long way from those days!

I've been in education for my whole career in one capacity or another. Currently I'm a District Educational Specialist with the Maui District. This is my second semester at UH, majoring in Educational Administration. I'd like to add a master's degree in educational administration to the degrees that I already hold.

I'm going to post this now to see if it works, then will address the reading in another posting. My fingers are crossed that this will work....here goes!!!

Excellent! Now for the course content:

Boyd and Ellison's (2007)Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship provided a background of information that I needed to understand the phenomena of social network sites (SNS). As defined by Boyd and Ellison, SNS are web-based services that "allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system". While this definition fits well with the less clearly articulated one that I obtained from my 21 year old son, the concept of online socialization is outside my realm of experience. Prior to reading Boyd and Ellison's article, I understood SNS to be a way for people to develop new relationships with people whom they may never meet. Being clearly grounded in the physical world, this had never interested me. I was somewhat surprised and intrigued by Boyd and Ellison's observation that developing new relationships is not the primary function of most SNS, rather it is an opportunity to make relationships visible. As they report, "on many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network".

In addition to the conceptual framework, Boyd and Ellison provide a basic description of different SNS sites, such as MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, and offer comparisons of these and other sites. They provide a history of emergent sites, their growth and occassionally, decline. Although this information was interesting to me, I was most fascinated in their account of the world wide participation in SNS sites, to use Boyd and Ellison's terms, "SNSs hit the mainstream". To me, this truly indicates that there is a fundamental change in the way that individuals on our planet are communicating and making connections on a multi-national level. The idea that a platform such as Orkut was created in the United States but now is a major communication site in Brazil and India reminds me that, as humans we have much more in common than we have differences.

While participating on SNS sites underscores our ability to connect anywhere in the world, Boyd and Ellison discuss the emphasis of some sites to attract or cater to users based on individual preferences or interests. They report that some, like aSmallWorld and BeautifulPeople, intentionally restrict access to appear selective and elite. Thy add that others, "activity-centered sites like Couchsurfing, identity-driven sites like BlackPlanet, and affiliation-focused sites like MyChurch—are limited by their target demographic and thus tend to be smaller. Finally, anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs".

Boyd and Ellison discuss the concepts of "impression management", which is central to the individual's participation on SNS. They quote Donath and Boyd (2004) who suggest that "public displays of connection serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles". While this aspect seems me to be the narrow focus of many parents' worries about the safety of their children, Boyd and Ellison describe the panic around privacy that is fanned by the popular press. I was surprised about the small body of research available around privacy issues in the comprehensive article by Boyd and Ellison.

Boyd and Ellison conclude their article by suggesting other important sociological research topics not yet investigated.

To tell the truth, Dibbell's (1998; revised) A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society was at first incomprehensible to me. Without the background needed to undertand the paradox of "real world" versus "cyberspace/imaginary world" turns in to "real world" and the interactions of the online experiences impacting the physical individual. Even the terms "RL" and "VR" were terms that I needed to stop and "translate" each time that I read them. To me, this article strongly urges the user of virtual reality spaces to act as ethically online as they would in real life. It provides the reader with insight as to the psychological harm caused to the participants when a crime is perpetrated. By relating the actions of Mr. Bungle in LambdaMOO and the fallout in both RL and VR, I was able to understand the interrelatedness of the experience on mulitple levels.

The third article for our class, Beer & Burrow's (2007) Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations discussed some developments in internet culture which emerged about 2005 . They defined Web 2.0, an upgraded web design which enabled more access to online resources and applications. They were interested in the sociological aspect of what they see as a "large scale shift toward user-generated web content".

Beer and Burrows delineate how Web 2.0 allows the construction of knowledge by users (exactly what we're doing in this class) through the use of many sources, such as Wikipedia, SNSs and personally identified blogs. Reading Beer and Burrow's article helped me to understand how information is continually refined and expanded through participation of those seeking information. Sites may be updated daily as learners add to existing content. Beer and Burrows' paragraph 2.13 provides an interesting example of this using the wikipedia entry on Harvey Sacks. Rather than a fixed authoritative account that would be found in a textbook, Beer and Burrows report that "these are dynamic entries that tell us not only about the searched term but also about the turbulent underpinnings of collective intelligence".

The concept that learning has moved so far beyond passive ingestation of knowledge fixed in time through a source such as a textbook has far reaching implications for the educational community. Reading this article made me realize that as an educational leader in my district, I need to understand that our students are learning in a very fashion than occurred for me AND in a very different fashion than is occurring in most of our public school classrooms. The dyanmic information gathering that is found on sites described in Beer and Burrow's article: the wikis, folksonomies, mashups and SNSs far outshine the "stand up and deliver" content provided by tired lackluster classroom teachers. As an administrator I often heard the phrases, "reform our schools", "facilitate learning for the 21st century learner" or "enable our students to become effective users of technology" however, I think that, like me, principals, teachers and other administrators in our districts do not even have a clue how to gain knowledge from sources like those outlined in the Beer and Burrow's article - let alone assist children in accessing this information. Along this line of thinking, Beer and Burrows go into some detail describing unflattering online material written in the United Kingdom and the United States about teachers. While this information is much more public than it has been ever before, it again points to students' need to obtain learning that is meaningful and relevant to the student.

While Beer and Burrows outline issues important for additional sociological research, I believe that these issues are important for educators as well. First, they recommend, "we need to be inside of the networks, online communities, and collaborative movements to be able to see what is going on and describe it. If we take Facebook for instance, it is not possible to enter into and observe the network without becoming a member, providing an institutional email, entering some personal details and generating a profile. Therefore, in order to get some idea of users and their practices it is necessary to become a 'wikizen'. The social researcher (and here I would add "educator") will need to be immersed, they will need to be participatory, and they will need to 'get inside' and make some 'friends'. We will have to become part of the collaborative cultures of Web 2.0, we will need to build our own profiles, make some flickering friendships, expose our own choices, preferences and views, and make ethical decisions about what we reveal and the information we filter out of these communities and into our findings. Our ability to carry out virtual ethnographies will – by necessity – involve moving from the role of observer to that of participant observer.

In paragraph 4.4, Beer and Burrows report that a second issue is that once inside these networks we may explore the possibilities of using Web 2.0 applications, and particularly the interactive potentials of SNS, as research tools or research technologies. Again, I would add that educators need to explore these as education tools. These open and accessible archives of information may be used to develop understandings of these people and to track out communities or networks of friends is education.

In terms of using Web 2.0 as the basis of gained knowledge, Tenopir's (2007) Online Databases—Web 2.0: Our Cultural Downfall? provides the reminder about the accuracy of the information gained from online sources may in actuality be of "dubious content". Although Tenopir is referencing online information, this is als true of any source of information, thus the individual must obtain some sort of internal compass that can identify true information from others that is less accurate. Tenopir provides some suggestions from Keen who provides guidance on how to point learners to more accurate information. As an answer to the amateur content of Wikipedia, he highlights Citizendium, the wiki encyclopedia that combines public participation with the guidance of experts. As an answer to unattributed news sites, he highlights the successes of some veteran newspapers (such as the Guardian and Wall Street Journal) and some more recent news sources (such as Politico) in transitioning to the web, with vetted content and amateur comments clearly differentiated and income generated in new ways. He suggests that legislative initiatives to catch and punish perpetrators can be a solution to illegal file sharing or intellectual property theft.