** My Intellectual Flakes **

 Weblogs can indeed server many purposes. You can blog to keep in touch with friends far or close. You can share  your happiness, sorrow, thoughts and millions of trivial things. Blogs can also be a channel to dump emotional garbage. You can just log in to moan then get on with your life. You can also blog for yourself, that is, to document your life, to leave footsteps and marks. I once heard someone who write journals everyday said: If I go to bed without writing journal, I feel one day slip by without leaving any trace. In this sense, it’s not exaggeration to say: I blog, therefore I exist. You can also aim something lofty, to inspire and touch others. Then you need to put your heart and efforts in blogging, do it diligently and continuously.

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One of the distinct features of weblogs is it’s flexibility. The flexibility manifested in many ways: content, usage, format, purpose, etc. The function of setting privacy can not only give bloggers the leeway of choosing what to share and protect their privacy, but also helped the writing process. I can scribble down the half-baked idea and keep it just to myself since I am not quiet comfortable sharing with others. It’s tentative, messy and fragmented. Later on, as I build on my idea, I can go back and easier change the settings of the blog entry. This flexibility of setting privacy level is, indeed, critical.

I agree that deep conversation might happen on blogosphere. But the pattern of the conversation tends to be individual-centered. That is to say, the blogger as the central node of interaction. However, I really doubt the effectiveness of blogs as many-to-many discussion tool.

The dialog on blog space is enabled by commenting. The problem with commenting is that it tend to be the conversation between individual commenter and the blogger. It will be hard for commenter A to talk to commentor B. In addition, commenting tends to be one-shot affair. Often people just leave comments and never bother or don’t remember to check back. Thus it will be rare to see the sort of back and forth in the dynamic interaction. Another potential problem with commenting is the duplicates. For example, if I read an interesting blog which already has 100 comments. I might not have to go through all the comments or question, but just jump to post my comments or question which might already been raised and addressed.

The social interaction enabled by blogs are highly asymmetrical. If we draw an analogy between discussion forum and a meeting where every participants have equal opportunity to expression their opinion; then blogs are like press conference. The opinion exchanged are centered on the topic initiated by the chair and all the questions/comments are addressed to him/her.

There is quite an interesting incident today. I switched cell phone with my husband today since his phone has the speaker. I need to record some phone conversation, so the solution I came up was: use a phone with a speaker coupled with a recorder. Then Angie mentioned that the phone has the inherent recording facility. The funny part was that when I called my husband trying to tease him, he told me MY phone had the recording function too!

This triggered me to contemplate on the relationship between the need and affordance. Most people usually don’t bother to explore the functionality of the device until they have a need for it. There are some people who like to play with all the possibilities afforded by the device. I am not that type. I don’t know my phone has the recording function because I never had the need for it. (I am a practical person in a sense.) Plus, I hate read manuals. Basically I learn the features based on needs.

However, when the need came up, it didn’t occur to me that the phone might have the recording function. The solution I came up with pretty much based on the old/traditional affordances of the device. That means for one, my perceived affordance of the device was rather fixed. Phone is for calling and recorder is for recording. I don’t know the availability of such a function on my phone. How lucky I am to have a friend like Angie. Then the question here is how the manufacturer can help customers like me to be better informed of the new features of the device, especially those features that are not part of their traditional affordances?

I think a video-based walk-through might help. I’d like to watch those video showing me the how-tos  and features of the products.

Burgess’s article also touched upon the same issue as Jenkins. Computer literacy nowadays is not just about technical competency, but more about critical, creative and network literacies.

 … critical technological literacy focuses on a deep, socially contextualized, and informed understanding of technology.

… creative literacies: the ability to experiment with technology in order to create and manipulate content that serves social goals rather than merely retrieving and absorbing information.

… network literacies include the ability and the impulse to effectively and ethically manipulate a range of technologies to communicate and collaboratively construct and share knowledge. (p. 107)

Burgess also pointed out that blogging, as a fluid and flexible genre, posed special challenges for students. Due to its individual ownership, students need to take initiative in experimenting and shaping the genre of blogging as their personal learning platform. Ultimately, it is students who need to decide on their preferred mode of blogging. However, many students are used to the stable and enclosed systems as CMS. This type of participatory and autonomous online activities are foreign for them. Thus a perspective shift is in need.

Although I don’t have much interest in probing into blogging as a writing genre, the issue mentioned by Burgess was indeed a valid point.

Burgess (2006) Blogging to learning, Learning to blog

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Jenkins’ book on convergence culture is a great book I read recently. It sparkled some deliberation on this participation gap in the virtual realm. He reminded us that convergence culture is not just about mixture of media in support of various needs. More importantly, it represents a cultural shift as consumers take the central stage through actively seeking, organizing and creating the information meaningful to them. This entails a need to change the mind-set of people from passive consumer to active participants. (I would label it “participation readiness” or “participatory mind-set”)

“Increasingly, the digital divide is giving way to concern about the participation gap. Throughout the 1990s, the primary question was one of access. … As long as the focus remains on access, reform remains focused on technologies; as soon as we begin to talk about participation, the emphasis shifts to cultural protocols and practices. “(p. 23)

Race, class, language differences amplify these inequalities in opportunities for participation. One reason we see early adopters is that some groups not only feel more confidence in engaging with new technologies but also some groups seem more comfortable going public with their views… (p.258)

It will be very interesting to decipher how the individual perception of media affordance is shaped by the cultural and social forces. The barrier to online participation is less about access to computer and comfortable level with technology; but more on the psychological perception and cultural norms, or as the ” consequence of uneven motivations and literacies“. The perception regarding what media is appropriate to contact whom under what circumstances differs from person to person. Then how this personal perception of technology formulated poses as a very interesting question.

Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. (p. 18)

The power of the grassroots media is that it diversifies; the power of broadcast media is that it amplifies. That’s why we should be concerned with the flow between the two: expanding the potentials for participation represents the greatest opportunity for cultural diversity. Throw away the powers of broadcasting and one has only cultural fragmentation. (p. 257)

In this convergence culture, we need to create a synergy between grassroots media and broadcast media. There is a balance to maintain between the top-down and bottom-up forces.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

I have been thinking about the pros and cons of private journals and blogs for a while. In my doctoral study, I focused on how blogs could help students’ reflection and social interaction. What I have is a group of students who had the habit of writing journals and/or personal blogs to document their experience. As part of assessment, they also wrote formal reflective essays shared only with the tutor. What I am aiming in my study is to reveal what unique benefit academic blogs can afford. Academic blogs are meant to be the middle space between formal reflective essays and informal/personal journals.
I happened to come across an article on the virtues of private journal today.

… a well kept journal provokes introspection. It is a liberating and productive outlet for random ideas, thoughts and feelings.

Make this journal private: This stops you from censoring yourself unnecessarily.

The key point to note is not the therapeutic effects of writing in a journal but rather the fact that regular journal keeping will influence the way you think or feel about an specific topic.

One thing is for sure, private journal meant to be read only the the author is easier to write. No worry about grammar, spelling and how the readers might react.

Here is a list of the journals on educational technology/ICT I got from a workshop I participated in Ascilite conference. Since I missed half of the workshop, I had no idea where the esteem score come from (it’s very likely that the list is evaluated by Australian scholars considering the second place of AJET). Anyway, it can be a reference to the journals in our field.

Journal	Esteem score
British J. of Educational Technology	16.35
Australian J. of Educational Technology	14.84
ALTJ: Research in Learning Technoloy	14.36
Computers & Education	14.02
Educational Technology, Research & Development	12.76
Australian Educational Computing	11.35
J. of Computer Assisted Learning	11.35
Technology, Pedagogy & Education	11.00
E-learning	9.74
J. of Interactive Learning Research	9.23
International J. of Educational Technology	9.23
J. of Research on Technology in Education	8.64
Interactive Learning Environments	7.97
Computer Assisted Language Learning: An international J.	7.97
Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education	7.17
Innovations in Education & Teaching International	7.17
Information Technology, Educational & Society	6.19
Access	6.19
International J. on E-learning: Corporate, government, healthcare	6.19
J. of Educational Multimedia & Hypermedia	6.19
International J. of Computers for Mathematical Learning	6.19
Internet & Higher Education	6.19
J. of Computers in Mathemtics & Science Teaching	6.19
Computers in Educaation J.	6.19
Computers in the Schools: The interdisciplinary J. of practice	6.19
Electronic J. for the Integration of Technology in Education	4.92
Education & Information Technologies	4.92
Education Libraries J.	4.92
International J. of Artificial Intelligence in Education	4.92
International J. of Information & Comm. Technology Education	4.92
J. of Computing in Higher Education	4.92
J. of Information Systems Education	4.92
Computers & Composition	4.92
J. of Asynchronous Learning Networks	4.92
J. of Educational Computing Research	4.92
School Library Media Research	4.92
Learning, Media & Technology	3.12
J. of Computing in Teacher Education	3.12
Knowledge Quest	3.12
Computer Science Education	3.12
Convergence: The J. of research into new media technologies	3.12
Education for Information	3.12
International J. of Interactive Technology & Smart Education	3.12

I ran into a quite interesting report titled “China Leads the US in Digital Self-Expression” released by IAC and JWT. The “Young Digital Mavens” study aimed to explore how attitudes toward digital technology are changing among Chinese and American youth.

Chinese youngsters regarded digital technology as essential part of their life.

As many as 80 percent of Chinese respondents agreed that “Digital technology is an essential part of how I live,” compared with 68 percent of Americans.

What surprised me was the Chinese attitudes towards online relationship and identity.

61 percent of Chinese respondents vs. 47% of American respondents agreed that “I have felt strong emotions through online interaction.

More than twice as many Chinese respondents admited that they have explored the online identity. Far more Chinese than Americans agreed that “Online interactions have broadened my sense of identity” (66 percent vs. 26 percent) and that “Online interactions have made me more self-aware” (60 percent vs. 26 percent).

As many as 82 percent of young Chinese agreed that “Interactivity helps create intimacy, even at a distance,” compared with just 36 percent of young Americans. And almost two- thirds (63 percent) of Chinese respondents agreed that “It’s perfectly possible to have real relationships purely online with no face-to-face contact,” vs. only 21 percent of Americans.

I still remember Hall’s theory concerning high vs. low-context culture. Chinese are from high-context culture which value physical contact. That’s why I am quite surprised that Chinese youngsters are more immersed in online world than their American counterparts. The virtual world seems more real for Chinese.

What is expected is the difference between Chinese and American’s attitude towards anonymity.

“One of the biggest differences between American and Chinese youth is in attitudes toward anonymity,” says Doctoroff. “In the U.S., with its cult of celebrity, young Americans see the Internet as a way of getting known, of building their personal brand; many regard the Internet as a kind of personal broadcasting medium. But whereas publicizing your name, face and opinions is seen as a step toward success in the U.S., in China it has been a surefire way of veering into dangerous territory. So for young Chinese, the Internet is the ideal place to air opinions and hear what others think without crossing the line.”

I came across Zotero today and found it pretty exciting. (I especially like one of its tag line: “Research, not re-research”). It it a Firefox extension that manage digital resources either online and offline. As a Firefox extension, Saving digital resources, like book, webpage is just a click away. You can have a quick tour of Zotero at here.

Basically, Zotero is like Endnote. For each item saved you can add notes, attachment, tags and you can group the related items together. Just like Endnote, MS Word plug-in is also available to easily create in-text citation and bibliography. Onefeature that is really cool is that you can save a webpage as a snapshot and highlight and annotate on it easily.

All in all, first impression of Zotero is really great. Much user-friendly than Endnote and more integrated with Google applications and other websites. I am thinking of giving Zotero a try. Files from Endnote can be imported easily. I tried it, it works great! Notes are also imported fine. Another plus – got spell-checking here. So important for me!

The hybrid or blended community has been a question dwelling in my head for a while. I am quite interested in the relationship between the online and physical part of the community. The term “online community” is too general. I like hybrid community better since it emphasized the complex online/offline relationship. Essentially, there are two types of hybrid community:

• A physically community extending to online space
• An online community extending to physical sphere

The type of hybrid community to my interest is the former one. These type of hybrid communities stem from the physical s  are drastically different from the online communities. First, the use of anonymous or false identity is rare. Since people already know each other in real life, the online identity basically mirrors their real ones.

I like the way to conceptualize online/offline relationships as the online and offline representations of a community. Then, the question arises here is how the online and offline representations of a community interplay? Are they overlapping or alternating each other?

Some envisages the hybrid community as two parallel layers of a community. These two layers are not independent of each other, but related. However, online representation is not just a copy or analogue of the material world. The virtual world could afford new ways of representations.

Here are some cool new technologies I came across recently:

Flip Video : A simple way to take video at anywhere and share it easily everywhere.

Eye-Fi: Wireless memory card. It can upload photos from camera directly online. This one might replace the photomate we have. But it still can’t replace the photomate we have. If we are on the trip and there is no access to wireless network, it’s not going to work.