July 2006 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 24, Issue 28
by Stephanie Jo Kent 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Irina, Here is my first attempt at using a wiki with a writing course: http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM375 I think it worked quite well, actually. :-) Am happy to discuss it with you if you'd like to email me offlist: steph Stephanie Jo Kent, M.Ed, CI Doctoral Student, Communication, UMass-Amherst 1852 Sunset Lake Road Brattleboro, VT 05301-9310 kentcon(a)sover.net steph(a)comm.umass.edu http://www.reflexivity.us On Jul 30, 2006, at 3:58 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Hello there, > > I am looking for some examples of innovative ways that "digital > technologies" such as blogs, facebook/myspace, wikis, flickr sites, > cell phones, clickers, etc. have been used in teaching college > classes. These can be success or disaster stories, revelations, or > suggestions of any articles about the topic. > > Thank you! > > irina > > Irina Gendelman > PhD Candidate > CIDR Consultant > Box 352310 > University of Washington > Seattle, WA 98195-2310 > www.urbanarchives.org

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Re 7. Re: Reference on impact of resources going online
by Milliken, Mary C. 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Caroline. You may find the report of the Community Intermediaries Research Project of interest: http://www.unb.ca/cirp/ The research team looked at the impact of online Canadian federal government services on community-based organizations and their clients. All the best, Mary C. Milliken PhD Candidate UNBF Sociology *************** On 7/28/06, Caroline Haythornthwaite <haythorn(a)uiuc.edu> wrote: I'm looking for papers and/or discussion of the impact of governments putting information online, and who can then access that information. Can anyone help with reference(s) or author(s) on this topic? It may be with other discussions of the digital divide, or with e-government. I'd like something with data on who is and is not able to get this kind of informaton if possible, but also any discussion of the issue. Thanks. Caroline ---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820

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Re: [Air-l] Community and our Conceptual Lexicon
by John Postill 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Ian Goodwin wrote: >...I think it would be a > large mistake to discount community altogether as a theoretically > unproductive term. > > [...] the most > important point about community is that it pervades everyday life. I'd > go so far as to say it seems to be indispensable to social discourse. I agree that community as an ideal appears to pervade everyday life, and particularly the discourse of policy-makers, politicians, activists and journalists **in Britain and other Anglophone countries **, but not so in my own country of origin, Spain, or, for instance, among Iban people in rural Sarawak where I conducted anthropological research in 1996-98 in longhouses (rumah panjai). These buildings look like ´villages under one roof´, to use an English phrase. People spoke of their ´rumah´ (house), not their ´community´ for which there is no vernacular term. As a folk notion, rumah panjai is indispendable to Iban scholars, just like community would be to scholars doing research on local authorities in Derbyshire, UK, or in Vancouver, British Columbia. So we have to be aware of the particular histories of community as part of certain social discourses (tied to powerful interests) in the English-speaking world. > > It is for this reason we should be careful about discounting community. I am not discounting community as part of social discourse in certain countries and on the internet. As I said in a previous email, it is still a very important folk, non-technical notion in those countries. But as a technical, social scientific term it is far too vague and it is preventing us from exploring *actual social formations* such as working committees, neighbourhood watch patrols, peer groups, web forums, etc.

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Re: [Air-l] teaching with technology (take 2)
by Stephanie Jo Kent 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Irina, Here is my first attempt at using a wiki with a writing course: http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM375 I think it worked quite well, actually. :-) Am happy to discuss it with you if you'd like to email me offlist: steph Stephanie Jo Kent, M.Ed, CI Doctoral Student, Communication, UMass-Amherst 1852 Sunset Lake Road Brattleboro, VT 05301-9310 kentcon(a)sover.net steph(a)comm.umass.edu http://www.reflexivity.us On Jul 30, 2006, at 3:58 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Hello there, > > I am looking for some examples of innovative ways that "digital > technologies" such as blogs, facebook/myspace, wikis, flickr sites, > cell phones, clickers, etc. have been used in teaching college > classes. These can be success or disaster stories, revelations, or > suggestions of any articles about the topic. > > Thank you! > > irina > > Irina Gendelman > PhD Candidate > CIDR Consultant > Box 352310 > University of Washington > Seattle, WA 98195-2310 > www.urbanarchives.org

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Community and our Conceptual Lexicon
by Ian Goodwin 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi All, In regard to the recent series of interesting posts about the usefulness (or otherwise) of community in thinking through/analysing virtual social relations, I'd like emphasise that I think it would be a large mistake to discount community altogether as a theoretically unproductive term. Community is undoubtedly one of the most 'slipperly' of terms - it certainly retains an inherent definitional ambiguity. This makes it an infuriatingly difficult term difficult term to employ productively in social research. This is partly because community has always been tied to normative prescription as well as empirical description. Yet the most important point about community is that it pervades everyday life. I'd go so far as to say it seems to be indispensable to social discourse. Thus, as Peter Hamilton put it in his perceptive introduction to Cohen's (1985) classic study (The Symbolic Construction of Community), community would have long ago been "discounted as grist to the scholarly mill were it not for the remarkable hold that the idea of community exerts over both the intellectual and popular mind" (p.7). It is for this reason we should be careful about discounting community. People manifestly believe in community and use the term in their everyday discourse. In this sense community motivates, sustains, and structures social action. If we are to fully understand the development of online sociability, therefore, in many instances (where the term is employed 'in the field' by users themselves), we need to understand, following an interpretive epistemology, how users of the technology understand the term. This will undoubtedly be context specific, but it is also central to how the technology becomes actively used. In this respect the positive normative overtones of community often come into play. For example fears of 'community decline', whilst difficult if not impossible to verify from an objective perspective, often motivate residents of localities to become involved in online initiatives (and structure how they then interact online - the topics they deem 'relevant', the goals of the online group etc) - this was certainly the case in the community informatics initiatives I studied in Birmingham (UK). Best, Ian Goodwin Senior Lecturer MA Communication Studies/ Graduate Diploma in Digital Media School of Communication Studies Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies Auckland University of Technology Private Bag 92006 Auckland 1020 Aotearoa/ New Zealand Telephone 64-9-917 9999 x 7734 Email ian.goodwin(a)aut.ac.nz

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defining community
by Barry Wellman 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

To my mind, the UR article on defining community is Hillery, George Jr. 1955. "Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement." Rural Sociology 20:111-122. There have been follow-ups, including Barry Leighton and me, Wellman, Barry, and Barry Leighton. 1979. "Networks, Neighborhoods and Communities." Urban Affairs Quarterly 14:363-90. And a NetLab rant at computer scientists, who were really sloppy in usage: Wellman, Barry, and Milena Gulia. 1999. "Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities." Pp. 331-366 in Networks in the Global Village, edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder, CO: Westview. Everything old is new again! Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] AU Visa Needed
by Marj Kibby 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Australia and the US are signatories to a Visa Waiver agreement, so the ETA is the visa you have when you are not having a visa. A Clayton's visa. Clayton's is a non-alcoholic beverage - advertised as "The drink you have when you are not having a drink" Marj Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby(a)newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604 >>> badenh(a)csse.unimelb.edu.au 31/07/2006 9:33 am >>> Make sure you bring the printout of the confirmation number. There's no printed/stamped visa for US citizens. Recent experience with inbound US citizens says that this works reliably, FWIW :-) Baden On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, Ted M Coopman wrote: > Hello All, > > Just discovered that you need a visa to get into Australia. This may be a no-brainer for most folks outside the US, but I think that it might be a surprise to US travelers who are used to not having to have one. > > Just go to: http://www.eta.immi.gov.au/ETAAus1En.html > > You can apply online ($20 AU) and it registers you in their database and gives you a confirmation number. > > -TED > > Ted M. Coopman > Department of Communication > University of Washington > > > > > _______________________________________________ > The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ > _______________________________________________ The air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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Maine OLPC - was - India Rejects One Laptop Per Child
by M.B.Gaved 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

Hi Mark Do you have any references to publications I (and other AoIR'ers) could download / otherwise access on the Maine "one laptop per child" project? It would be interesting to read the Maine project expectations and subsequent experiences as a comparison to the MIT project. Kind regards Mark Mark Gaved Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Milton Keynes MK7 6AA kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark/ office +44 1908 654513 mobile +44 7796 266 592 m.b.gaved(a)open.ac.uk -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark Warschauer Sent: 27 July 2006 13:49 To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child ... [snip] ... Finally, in answer to Jeremy's question about what happened to the laptop project in Maine, the answer is it's still going strong. The program was renewed after the first four-year contract (2002-2006) for a second four-year contract (2006-2010) for all 7th and 8th grade students in the state. There is also a laptop program in Maine at the high school level, but it is adopted (and funded) district by district and is thus not universal. Mark -- Mark Warschauer Associate Professor of Education and Informatics University of California, Irvine 2001 Berkeley Place Irvine, CA 92697-5500 tel: (949) 824-2526, fax: (949) 824-2965 markw(a)uci.edu; http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw

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Re: [Air-l] Open Source Software and Civil Society
by Charlie Lowe 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

Eli wrote, "Is anyone aware of any research that addresses the experience of civil society organizations (aka nonprofits, NGOs, voluntary orgs, etc.) using open source software? Or perhaps deals with the putative alignment between the "values" of open source and the values of civil society?" You might try talking with the CivicSpace community over in their forums. http://civicspacelabs.org/home/civicspace CivicSpace is an open source content management system for use by non-profits and grassroots civic action organizations which grew out of Deanspace (see Jon Lebkowsky's "Deanspace, Social Networks, and Politics": http://extremedemocracy.com/chapters/Chapter%2017-Lebkowsky.pdf) Even if they don't know of any research, I know that the project leaders would be keen on learning about anything you come up with. Charlie Lowe Department of Writing Grand Valley State University

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Webology: Volume 3, Number 2, June, 2006
by Alireza Noruzi 30 Jul '06

30 Jul '06

Dear All, apologies for cross-posting. We are pleased to inform you that Vol. 3, No. 2 of Webology, an OPEN ACCESS journal, is published and is available ONLINE now. This issue contains: ------------------ Editorial -- Alireza Noruzi -- http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n2/editorial8.html ----------------------------------------- Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries -- Jack M. Maness -- http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a25.html ----------------------------------------- Web-Based Services Expected from Libraries: A Case Study -- Satish Kanamadi & B.D. Kumbar -- http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a26.html ----------------------------------------- Chemoinformatics and the World Wide Web: An Interview with Professor Peter Willett -- Yazdan Mansourian -- http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a27.html ----------------------------------------- Call for Papers: Sociology of the Web, Vol. 3, No. 4 -- Guest Editor: Dr. William Bostock, University of Tasmania, Australia -- http://www.webology.ir/cfp.html ----------------------------------------- Regards, Alireza Noruzi Webology www.webology.ir/callforpapers.html

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