ITC510 – Online Communities

After many discussions with our folksonomy colleagues, this hueristic experience became a reality. I finally decided to run the NSW DET home page through its paces. I did feel pretty comfortable with it anyway, but the thing that I knew would should show is the sheer size of the site, as it can be very hard to locate required information.

Well, a thought about the Etherpad for Collaboration. It seems to be working quite ok for at least Sarah and myself. We were able to log onto the Blue PAD and collaborate about our learning experiences and how we might be able to utilise this in real life.

Ken, I am a little uncertain as to the direction of our BLOGS and PADS. I suppose the BLOGS are our PODs (Pools of Online Dialogue); however, I am not certain as to the direction I should take with posts like this one. For example, I assume they are not OLR Exercises, so I didn’t choose to link this post to the OLR Exercises. I chose instead to link this post to our POD work.

Clarifications greatly accepted.

You can read our collaboration below: http://dalemate.edublogs.org/files/2009/08/ITC510-Etherpad-Collaboration.pdf.

Hi everyone,

Please find attached a detailed (I think) pdf here:

http://dalemate.edublogs.org/files/2009/08/HowtouseEtherpad.pdf,

on how to access our PADs on the ETHERPAD site.

Hoping this helps everyone and is clear to follow.

Could the blue team members please access our (the BLUE pad) today, so that I know it works.

Regards and good luck,
Dale.

An issue that may arise wtih our POD after the 20th of August is of the $8 per month per user fee that it seems will be imposed on our POD site as pasted below.

How we get around this, I am unsure yet. Maybe we / I will need to create a free POD? Any thoughts?

Exercise 2: Social Networking Taxonomy

What is Folksonomy?

Initially, the term folksonomy really put me off! Yes, I understood the term of taxonomy, for example a ‘Learning Taxonomy’ as being an ordered program of learning.

I researched everywhere, even typing in exact phrases such the question at hand, and FOAF, but it wasn’t until the search for plain old ‘folksonomy’ returned a website named “Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-up of Apples and Oranges” at the address of http://tomgruber.org/writing/ontology-of-folksonomy.htm.

Reading through this site I soon obtain an explanation for a folksonomy such as “the emergent labeling of lots of things by people in a social context“. This labelling by ordinary untrained “folk” is argued to be of assistance “in countering spam-induced noise from search engines“; thus, producing more reliable information returns.

Pulling the terms “folk” (people) and “onomy” (ordered) together implie an ordered arrangement of data and information by people.

What is Social Networking?

How does it compare with your ideas about online communities?

Online communities allow social networking to occur. A social network is where a community of virtual people communicate and share ideas online. Websites such as facebook and myspace are social networking sites and people are able to communicate (virtually) like minded thoughts and experiences or even run businesses / organisations from these social sites.

My students, being digital natives, all come to class with their mobile phones, ipods, portable dvd players, just to name a few and tend to be more engaged in their own technologies rather than with the curriculum on offer.

Will a study into online commuinties and social netwoks change your professional practice?

Through this subject I am hoping to achieve a greater understanding of the purpose of online communities through social networking and the needs of the users who communicate through such sites. I am wanting to implement an online learning community with which to further enhance student motivation both in and out of school.

 Social Networking – whilst accessing the ‘fatPublisher’ blog site through the following link http://www.fatpublisher.com.au/resources.php?topic=6&article=14&page=1, I found here definition of social networking to just simply being a “structure made up of relationships and links, whether strong or weak, to people we have something in common with”. Continued reading altered the definition of social networking to that of an online definition and interpreting this as “a series of websites where people gather to interact with other like-minded individuals”. This coincides with my previous thoughts of an online social network as being “a social network where a community of virtual people communicate and share ideas online”, as stated earlier by me.

 Online Communities – reading the website for ‘Researching Online Communities’ accessed through the hyperlink of https://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/staff/gwadley/roc/index.html determined the definition of Online Communities to be that of “a group of people who interact using a computer network as their primary medium of communication”‘.

What do you see as the connection between social network platforms and the development of online communities?

I see a social network to be an actual network of people (not technologies) communicating like minded thoughts through a computer network such as the Internet; thus creating an Online Community.

Hi all and Welcome to my Online Learning Record for ITC510.

My name is Dale Mate and I am a Technology teacher (currently teaching maths and food tech I might add) in a small 7 – 12 school in Walgett of NSW, soon to turn into a Community School. I have been teaching for 4 years now and am also the IT Coordinator.

In recent times, I have setup a simple webserver which is now running a ClickView database and a new school intranet. I have been heavily involved in the purchase and install of 8 new IWBs and just finalised the PC installation to run them.

With the advent of the NSW DER (laptops for learning) staff PD is now imperative; thus, I am looking forward to completion of this course as with the Grad Cert in ICT Ed in 2006.

The purpose of this Online Learning Record (OLR) is to present my learnings and discoveries through  an online portfolio of interactive categories that match the learning modules of the ITC510 course.