Serendipity35

Everyone likes to get an award, right? Being called a "Thinking Blogger" is good, yes?

Earlier this month, another blog that I write about poetry was tagged for a "Thinking Blogger Award" by a Canadian blogger at Line Upon Line.

This is a meme (rhymes with "gene"). It's a term created by biologist Richard Dawkins for a "unit of cultural information" which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes" (i.e., the units of genetic information).

Violet lists the "rules" as being: 1) If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think. 2) Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme. 3) Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

She said something nice about my blog: "Poets Online - the blog, which is a companion to Poets Online. The thought-provoking poetry-writing prompts at Poets Online are explained and expanded in this excellent poetry blog."

And what did I do? I rejected my award. Instead of being gracious, I posted a comment saying:

Thanks for thinking of us as thinking. Rather than risk the wrath of Technorati, I will decline to participate. I do agree with them that chain posts too often lead to splogs and clog up the blogosphere, and to quote Groucho Marx, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept someone like me as a member."

Geez, what an ingrate. But I had read about splogs (spam blogs used only to promote other blogs or websites) and chain posts (like chain mail; post a link to me and then link to 5 friends and in days you will get lots of hits) and I know that Technorati frowns on this and supposedly takes action to prevent it from affecting their ratings.

So, I played it safe.

But last week, someone who I would put in my own thinking blogger list, Karine Joly of CollegeWebeditor.com, was listed by someone and she accepted & reciprocated with a link, and gave her own list of five, and I made her list.

Now, what do I do?

I've written about the incestuous nature of bloggers here before. I don't want to encourage splogs and chain posts. But I don't want to be ungrateful. Again.

I have done recommendations for podcasts I like here, and I'm almost always linking to another blog or site. So, it's not like I'm opposed to linking.

Even Technorati's own blog lists favorite blogs. In fact, that's the point of their whole service - to measure the buzz on blogs - how many people link to you gives your blog "authority" (Karine's authority is 83; mine is only 17, so she really must know what she's talking about when she picks me!).

Now, I'm thinking about this (I mean, I am a twice-tapped thinking blogger, so I must be) and it doesn't seem quite so strange to do this post.

Don't punish me Technorati!

No point in linking to blogs that get all the attention on Technorati already. I couldn't come up with 5 thinking poetry blogs (know one? send me a link), but here are some blogs that get me thinking about things...

1. Throughlines - is a very thoughtful blog written by Bruce Schauble, head of the English Department at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii (tough location!). His interests include teaching, writing, reading, photography, and music. He says, "I'm perhaps most interested in learning more about how the open arena of technology can enhance my students' learning experience. I know it's been enhancing mine." A sample of his thinking/blogging is this post on habits of mind.
2. Inquiry and Se Hace Camino Al Andar are both written by Nancy Brodsky, a teacher in New York City who writes about her lessons and her personal growth as an English teacher. The first blog is on the nycwp.net site and the second is more personal, so it's on Typepad.
3. indexed - a blog by Jessica Hagy made up entirely of diagrams/graphs/charts drawn on index cards. This blog also gives me hope that someday some media mogul will decide to pay me to blog: the indexed blog as a book will be in stores in early 2008. She describes it as "a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing the actual math."
4. I just recently started reading Christopher Sessums' blog which is on EduSpaces.net. It's a blog I came upon back when that was known as Elgg and I had added him as one of my "friends" there. He listed distance learning as an interest there. He directs the Office of Distance Education in the University of Florida’s College of Education, and is going for his doctorate "where I am investigating the impact of social software on teaching and learning."
5. I had my students this spring create Blogger accounts for a course on visual design that I taught. All were new to blogging and most were not even blog readers. It was both a way to create a more authentic writing environment & audience, and offered the opportunity to talk about the visual aspects of blogs (CSS, video embeds, images, logos etc.) for those who had little or no web design experience. They needed to think about their blogging (if only because it was parts of their grades) and I needed to think about their blogging. Here are two samples that I thought were very good for blog newbies. I'm hoping that some of the students will continue blogging now that the course is over - wouldn't that be something that would make a teacher happy. Catherine's Corner: Observations of a Tech Writer is at catherines-corner.blogspot.com and Sandra's blog On Technical Writing and Visual Design is smlav.blogspot.com

Tim's post a few days ago on the state of "continuing education" and my own entry yesterday that included a reference to 1970's video, sent me back to the earliest efforts in "online collaboration" here at NJIT.

The Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) came about in the early 1970's when IBM was a power to be reckoned with and computers in schools were limited to universities. EIES received funding from IBM and AT&T, non-profit foundations like the Annenberg Trust, and governmental agencies like the NSF and the NJ Commission of Science and Technology. EIES was the first major implementation of collaborative software.

Here's EIES founder Murray Turoff describing in 1972 an early version of EIES:

"Basically the Delphi Conference appears to have utility when one or more of the following conditions were met:

• the group cannot meet often enough in committee to give adequate timely consideration to the topic because of time or distance constraints
• there is a specific reason to preserve the anonymity of the conferees (e.g., refereeing of position papers or a free exchange among different levels in an organizational structure)
• the group is too large for an effective conference telephone call or committee exchange
• the group is interdisciplinary to the extent that a structured or refereed communication mode as opposed to a committee or panel approach is more desirable in promoting an efficient exchange of information
• telephone and letter communications, on a one-to-one basis, are insufficient or too cumbersome to augment the particular committee activity
• disagreement among members of the group is too severe for a meaningful committee of the face-to-face process for the exchange of views and information."

Circa 1975, EIES and the Computerized Conferencing and Communications (CCCC) and Emerging Technologies Centers at NJIT were all pre-public Internet. By 1977, they were connecting scientists worldwide with email, chat and discussion groups. They started Groupware and user programming using the homegrown Interact interface language. Much of the experimentation was designed to learn how to structure group communications. NJIT owns the trademark on CollectiveIntelligence and the VirtualClassroom.They had thousands of researchers, futurists, authors, librarians and corporate executives using the tools until 2000.

EIES pioneered many of the concepts of BBS- style community software and even the CMS products like WebCT/Blackboard of today and it evolved to include threaded-replies, anonymous messages and polling.

The same way that we play semantics badminton with terms like "course management system", "learning management system" and "virtual learning environment", the EIES era hit "decision support system", "computer-mediated communications", and "collective intelligence" back and forth.

Some of the EIES crew is still at NJIT including distinguished professors Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz, while others like Al Leurck and Jim Scarver are nearby at Xanthus, but the centers and EIES are retired.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has been a pioneer in the adaptation and implementation of computer technology for the purpose of augmenting and extending the classroom experience.

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NJIT considers its trademarks to be of great value and intends to maintain its active proprietorship over them. Like other institutions, NJIT respects the valid property rights of others, and trusts that others in the academic community will do the same. Academic institutions and others wishing to make use of the Marks may apply to NJIT for a license to do so. Information regarding licensing can be obtained at the NJIT Trademark Registration site or from the Office of Intellectual Property, NJIT, University Heights, Newark, New Jersey 07102. E-mail: intellectual_property@njit.edu

 

I'm blogging from this seminar today. It's a one-day seminar designed for non-technical professionals about podcasts, blogs, and wikis. We had 4 experts that presented information on these tools. Our audience was primarily corporate, though we had some academic attendees too.

New Technologies in Communications: Podcasting - Presented by Steve Lubetkin, Lubetkin & Co. Communications, LLC, Cherry Hill New Jersey  Podcasts, digital audio programs delivered through Internet-related technologies, can enable communications professionals to reach narrowly-targeted audiences more effectively than mass marketing techniques. Steve's talk ranged from defining podcasts. the ways that podcasts are being used in business, downloading and listening to podcasts (using iTunes, subscribing to podcasts, devices for viewing podcasts) and especially on using podcasts to promote products and services. Though this was not a hands-on session by any means, Steve addressed some software and hardware that works well for podcasting and an overview of the technical steps involved in creating a podcast.

Steve has come from the traditional PR world to consulting on technology - especially podcasting - for corporate clients. Check out some of Steve's podcast work at http://lubetkin.libsyn.com/ and his blog at lubetkinsotherblog.blogspot.com

Corporate and Organizational Weblogging: From First Steps to Communities of Practice” Presented by Dr. Drew Ross, Visiting Fellow, Oxford University  Organizational and Corporate Blogs are transforming the way in which groups communicate-- both within companies/organizations and to the rest of the world. This seminar will bring the participants up to full speed on the world of work-related weblogging and will enable participates to transfer knowledge and engage in informed thinking about how blogs might operate within their own organization. With a focus on using weblogs to encourage (and house, in some cases) Communities of Practice (CoPs), the workshop will engage participants in some real-life problem-based thinking about the technical, ethical, and social aspects of work weblogging, with examples and vignettes from real-life weblogging situations. 
Drew created a demo blog for today at https://organizationblogs.workpress.com

"Wikis At Work" - Presented by Tim Kellers, IT Liaison, Continuing Professional Education, NJIT and me (Ken Ronkowitz), Manager, Instructional Technology & Media Services, NJIT  So this was my session. Honestly, I prefer blogging to wiki-ing, but then again they serve different needs. Wikis are often described as collaborative web sites" and are being used for project management, knowledge sharing, and proposal writing. The benefits of this collaborative approach include reducing daily phone calls, e-mails and meeting time as well as encouraging collaboration. Internet research firm, the Gartner Group, predicts that Wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009. Peter Thoeny, the creator of TWiki, a leading Wiki program, says at least 20,000 downloads of his software are being used by businesses. Walt Disney, SAP, Adobe, Nokia, Novell, and Motorola are among the corporations using Wikis for collaboration. We were presenting information on how wikis are being used right now and how an organization (be it a company or school) might use them.

We were pretty focused on open-source wiki software (since we are using Mediawiki software here at NJIT and in the seminar) but we addressed a few commercial products that are available. As with most open-source software, eventually, someone steps in (think Red Hat) and adds the IT support for those people who want/need it by offering commercial Wiki products. However, knowing that our audience today is primarily made up of small business people, we discussed server installation, support and security considerations for those who do not have an IT department behind them.

SOME THEMES THAT RAN THROUGH THE DAY

• There was a lot of talk and concern about security - how to protect your content, whether you really want to go "public."
• Using open-source software vs. commercial products and hosting content on your own server vs. somewhere else. Small businesses seem more willing to use a commercial product & hosting than the university.
• Copyright and intellectual property concerns - from small items like what images can you use from other sites (including just linking), to the cut/paste blogging that goes on from site to site, preventing search engines from finding your materials, the passing on of video & audio (podcast & otherwise) via email and posting at sites like YouTube and others, password protecting a blog or wiki and the archiving of you online material by sites like Google, Yahoo and archive.org.
• Questions about making money or commercializing your blog, podcast or wiki.
• Vandalism & spamming to public blogs and wikis.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 -- 8 am - 2:30 pm at NJIT, Newark, NJ

A one-day seminar designed for non-technical professionals that will give you a broad range of information about podcasts, blogs and wikis. Experts from each field will present information to enhance your understanding and knowledge of these cutting edge marketing tools. The day will include three sessions:

New Technologies in Communications: Podcasting
Podcasts, digital audio programs delivered through Internet-related technologies, can enable communications professionals to reach narrowly-targeted audiences more effectively than mass marketing techniques.

• Defining podcasts: What are they? Types of Podcasts.
• Ways that Podcasts are being used in business
• Downloading and listening to podcasts using iTunes, subscribing to podcasts, devices for viewing podcasts.
• Using Podcasts to promote products and services
• Software and hardware that works well for podcasting
• The technical steps involved in creating a podcast
• Sources of music that won't cause licensing issues (podcast-friendly music)
• Some guidelines for professional-sounding podcasts

Corporate and Organizational Weblogging: From First Steps to Communities of Practice
Organizational and Corporate Blogs are transforming the way in which groups communicate-- both within companies/organizations and to the rest of the world. This seminar will bring the participants up to full speed on the world of work-related weblogging and will enable participates to transfer knowledge and engage in informed thinking about how blogs might operate within their own organization. With a focus on using weblogs to encourage (and house, in some cases) Communities of Practice (CoPs), the workshop will engage participants in some real-life problem-based thinking about the technical, ethical, and social aspects of work weblogging, with examples and vignettes from real life weblogging situations.

Wikis At Work
Wikis are often described as "collaborative web sites" and are being used for project management, knowledge sharing and proposal writing. The benefits of this collaborative approach include reducing daily phone calls, e-mails and meeting time as well as encouraging collaboration. Internet research firm, the Gartner Group, predicts that Wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009. Peter Thoeny, creator of TWiki, a leading Wiki program, says at least 20,000 downloads of his software are being used by businesses. Walt Disney, SAP, Adobe, Nokia, Novell and Motorola are among the corporations using Wikis for collaboration. Participants will learn how Wikis are being used and how to maximize collaboration. A special emphasis will be given to open source and commercial Wiki products, from server installation, to support and security considerations for your intellectual property.

Fee: $300 - your participation will award you Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
and includes breakfast and lunch. Register Now!

Free parking for this event is available on campus in the NJIT secured parking deck.
Directions to campus, parking and maps

Payment is expected at the time of registration. Credit cards are accepted.
Refund policy: 100% refund up to 5 days prior to the day of the event. No refund is given within 5 days of the event.

Email: techexpress@dl1.njit.edu