Month: May 2005

more bits of the fast fading limited understanding …
5. Marcus O�Donnell on ‘Blogging as pedagogic practice: artefact and ecology‘
this is one of the paper i personally find very thought-provoking and provided me with insights from a broad perspective. marcus looked at the broad theoretical models (from bloom’s taxonomy to seymour papert’s constructionism) and tried to draw their significance in the use of blogging. he also touched on metaphors that are related to deep/surface models of learning. he ended off by suggesting the implementation of course-wide blogs which “would evolve together with (and record) the student’s learning and practice experience”

I believe we will only unleash the full practical potential of blogging when we pay due attention to its place in this complex field of new communicative practices. We need to look at blogging, not as an isolated phenomenon, but as part of a broad palette of
�cybercultural� practices, which provide us with both new ways of
doing and new ways of thinking…… At the material and experiential level participation in cybercultures occurs along a continuum that begins with activities which are now almost ubiquitous such as web surfing, email and googling, the use of more specialist techniques such as RSS feeds, instant messaging, peer-to-peer file transfer and podcasting through to participation in emergent movements such as those centred around open-source software or creative commons, �copyleft� initiatives…… So how does blogging change the way we think? How does it embody the virtual, dynamic, emergent and idiosyncratic characteristics of cyberdiscursivity?

6. Ian MacColl et al. on ‘Reflections on reflection: Blogging in undergraduate design studios‘
this paper gave a very good overview of integrating blogs into two two design-based degree courses. we can look at it as another example of use of blogs for portfolio building. a successful one in fact 🙂
7. Angela Thomas on ‘Fictional Blogging and the Narrative Identities of Adolescent Girls‘
a pity angela was sick and unable to present this paper. after reading it, i have gotten a good understanding of the typology of blog fiction as an emergent genre. it is interesting to learn that the girls involved in the study are actually “authoring versions of themselves as they write in their role”. wondering if this “fusing/hybrid identities” is common or typically the case in blog fictions. how wonderful if we can introduce this form of writing to our classroom lessons, not only will we be cultivating creativity and imagination, some form of collaborative effort is in place if students were allowed to develop character diaries.

To continue the documentation of my quick fading memories containing my limited understanding …
2. Rebecca Blood’s Keynote
Did not manage to catch the title of her keynote if there is one. She placed in perspective our current day blogger as a publisher, who seeks to establish conversation with his/her reader. She sees our shift from “the age of specialist” towards “the age of amateur”. We are also shifting from the mode of “collaborative media” towards a world of “participatory media”. Bloggers are filtering and producing news with their own perspectives, and some of these can first be based on news by media and professional reporters.
Quoting the evolvement of wikipedia as an example, she further touched on her belief that everyone is interested in something, and given time, everyone can be good in something.
very forward looking keynote and place her belief on the world’s future development, if only i can catch more of the thoughts in words:| some other reflections by Michael Specht goes here.
3. Mark Bernstein on “Protecting the Blogosphere“
A very inspiring presentation with a very global view of things, specifically the blogosphere. Blogs have different popularity and many of these exist in “the long tail”. Those in this ‘tail’ are least often referenced but their existence are just as important. Helping to keep them alive (by reading and linking) keeps the whole blogosphere alive.
I was unable to capture the full (high speed) train of thoughts but if you would like to ‘visit’ the presentation, listen to this podcast by Mark Bernstein himself. Also, check out this note on the presentation by Michael S.
4. Adrian Miles on ‘Media Rich versus Rich Media‘
This paper shares insight on the video prototypes that Adrian Miles is working on. By making videos granular, some affordances of blog (text-based) postings can be transferred into videos! This include clickable hyperlinks in the video itself, which is shown in his 1st prototype; The 2nd prototype allows 2 separate video streams to run side-by-side, with separate controls, allowing one video to ‘quote’ something in the other video; The 3rd prototype demonstrates the possiblity of placing commentaries after a clip hyperlinked from elsewhere has been played. In other words, video streams from different sources can be combined into one ‘screen’.
(to be continued …)