July 2007 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: [Air-l] online ethnography
by 'Gail Taylor 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

In doing readings, I'm finding that some ethnographic studies are more representative of action research. These are the studies where researchers are intentionally doing and saying things to produce changes in actions among members of online communities. A good starting point for exploring action research is Stringer's book. It might also be helpful to take a look at articles that are reporting the findings of action research studies that have been conducted in school, work, and various community settings. Chisholm and Elden's article is a good starting point for this exploration, as well as popular works of Argyris and Schon. Stringer, E. T. (2007). Action Research (3rd Ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Chisholm. R. F., & Elden, M. (1993). Features of emerging action research. Human Relations, 46 (2), 275-298. --------------------------------------- Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant Library & Information Science Research Assistant "Technology enables man to gain control over everything except technology." -- Unknown

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The latest accessory for your ipod "The ipod suit"
by Martin Garthwaite 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

http://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/product/B000SMZKQ4?extid=070705mherotxt Whilst not technically internet related, I thought that this might be of interest to some on this list. For those of you that have never heard of Marks & Spences, it's primarialy a UK clothing store but does have international outlets. In the UK it is reasonably easy to slot all sorts of things into the UK class system, M&S caters for the "middle class" safe and reliable place to buy cloths. -- Martin Garthwaite PhD candidate, London Knowledge Lab www.lkl.ac.uk +447957 764819 Skype id mgarthwaite1330 MS IM marting(a)gmail.com

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ICE-T anyone
by Barry Wellman 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

A group of us have been studying Chapleau, northern Ontario. We have discovered that in addition to the I and the C of ICT, the folks there use the Internet more than urbanites to find out about -- and to order -- goods. Sorta like the Sears or the Eatons catalog of old that served rural areas. Some may even sell on eBay, etc -- we'll check on that this fall. Altho you might argue that browsing the net for goods is "Information", it would be a real stretch to say that actually buying and selling goods is info (or comm). Hence, we propose the new acronym, ICE-T, for Information, Communication and Exchange Technologies.* Before I/we go too far with this, what do you think? *Not to be confused with the actor/rapper or the tilting German train, much less that heavily sweetened stuff I get in the US South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE-T PS: Happy Canada Day to all. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days _______________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] ICE-T anyone (out of office reply)
by Philippa Smith 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

I will be away from my office until Tuesday 17h July. For any urgent matters please contact the ICDC administrator Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers on (09) 921 9999 ext 8473.

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online ethnography
by lilly nguyen 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

Hi all- I was wondering if anyone has come across articles and literature on doing online ethnography. I know that AOIR has put together an ethical document on doing online research more broadly, but has there been any kind of exploration of the role and definition of ethnography in online environments? It seems to me that there has been work into online communities and online behaviors and practices through the use offline ethnography, but has there been any kind of consideration of what online ethnography would look like or be defined as? -lilly Lilly Nguyen PhD Student, Dept. of Information Studies lillynguyen(a)ucla.edu

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Re: [Air-l] online tool to present research findings
by Anders Fagerjord 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

Nicole Reinhold wrote: > When conducting research I use several online tools and methods > but when presenting the results I'm back offline with powerpoint or > pdfs. > Whereby it would be great if we could use online tools to make the > research > findings more interactive, multimedia embedded and so on. > > I was wondering if some of you have used online tools to present > research > findings. > I was thinking of a tool with which I easily can create various > templates, > in which I can insert text (quotes) and images, videos and links. > As anybody experience in that area or found an inspiring format of > presenting research finding online? My answer may well be seen as a plug for my paper at the AoIR 8.0 conference on "Playing with the academic format", but anyway... By "presenting the results" do you mean an oral presentation in a conference or a seminar, or publication of results in an electronic journal? Both raise issues. There are many OK tools for creating slideshows for presentations, my favorite is Apple's Keynote, which exports Flash files for web pages. I see, however, many good reasons to limit slides or omit them altogether. Research in cognitive load theory (Sweller) suggests slides most of the time do not help, and may inhibit audience understanding. The exception is figures or illustrations that you talk about. PowerPoint is also critiqued in other parts of academia (e.g., Tufte), and the pedagogues I talk to have a hard time finding studies that show slides help. (If I'm starting a flaming new thread here, so be it.) As for electronic hypertext/multimedia publishing, like it is done in Kairos and other journals or in the works by Kolb, Moulthrop, Miles and others, there are no quick solutions. These hypertexts take time to create -- and they take time to consume (I use Tinderbox for that kind of work). For many fields, time is a more important factor than presentation or rhetorics, so genre experiments are discouraged. For other fields, the presentation approaches an art, so templates would not make much sense. It seems that most e-journals would like a basic text format they can pour into a publishing system and its templates. We have seen some excellent videos on YouTube the last year. They are hard to create, with little automation. I would certainly welcome templates for communication of research results with links and multimedia. But I think we have to build them ourselves. I'm into that -- but not far. For both purposes, I would suggest you are best off with a blog right now. (Some would probably say a wiki.) A good blog system (I like WordPress) is powerful, flexible, and fairly easy to use. You can communicate your results to anyone, you have the archive, and the HTML pages may be turned into a large-screen presentation if you use Opera, or tinker with JavaScript templates like Eric Meyer's S5 (http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/) That said, I hope you prove me wrong :-) --anders -- Anders Fagerjord, dr. art. Associate professor, Department of Media and Communcation, Unversity of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern N-0317 OSLO Norway http://www.media.uio.no http://fagerjord.no

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Re: [Air-l] online tool to present research findings
by Marj Kibby 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

Have you explored: Zoho http://www.zoho.com/ MyDataBus http://www.mydatabus.com/ Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ Cheers, 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 >>> Nicole Reinhold <nicole.reinhold(a)philips.com> 07/04/07 2:47 AM >>> Hello everybody, I do not know if some of you encounter the same problem. When conducting research I use several online tools and methods but when presenting the results I'm back offline with powerpoint or pdfs. Whereby it would be great if we could use online tools to make the research findings more interactive, multimedia embedded and so on. I was wondering if some of you have used online tools to present research findings. I was thinking of a tool with which I easily can create various templates, in which I can insert text (quotes) and images, videos and links. As anybody experience in that area or found an inspiring format of presenting research finding online? I would appreciate any idea best wishes Nicole MA. Nicole Reinhold, Senior Research Consultant Philips Design nicole.reinhold(a)philips.com, http://www.design.philips.com _______________________________________________ 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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Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 36, Issue 6
by Margaret Weigel 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

To all -- I will be out of the office July 4-6; I will be happy to respond to your message when I return to PZ on Monday, July 9. Have a great Fourth of July, Best, Margaret Weigel ********************************************* Project Specialist, New Digital Media Project Zero, Harvard GSE *********************************************

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Re: [Air-l] Favorite Link Analysis Software (Zachary Devereaux)
by zachary devereaux 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

If you want to read about the IssueCrawler that was suggested earlier, a webtool I have used a lot and highly recommend, go to www.govcom.org There is also a strong heterogeneous data visualization software called "ReseauLu" from www.aguidel.com that can be used for hyperlinkage analysis or other relational mapping and database visualization processes. And I have recently checked out some hyperlinkage maps made with UCI Net a free software available for download at http://www.analytictech.com/downloaduc6.htm Cheers, Zach -- Zachary Devereaux PhD Student Rogers / OGS Doctoral Fellow Researcher / Lab Coordinator, Infoscape Research Lab: www.infoscapelab.ca Communication and Culture Program Ryerson and York Universities, Toronto Mobile: 647-299-5714

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Re: [Air-l] social networking migration
by 'Gail Taylor 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

Connor Shaefer wrote: "I know my point is primarily semantic here, but I find it very important in terms of system theory. The network, especially in this context, is a very abstract concept, but nonetheless I do not think its aspect of being limited in applicability and diffusion can be altered; even if it could, I do not think the population or userbase of these SNSs would placidly accept the "homogenization," as Gail so strongly put it." I think this would depend on the user being able to recognize this was happening as well as the value that was placed on the previous user experience. Nancy Baym shared information in another posting that highlights these concerns. Nancy wrote: "There are also differences in what is even perceived as a social networking site in the first place. To my surprise, a number of people have commented in the last.fm forums in response to my survey that they never thought of Last.fm as a social networking site because of its central focus on music." I hang out online with a large international group of workplace educators. These individuals use a variety of advanced communication and information technologies as business platforms to enable various processes. Groupware software products are recognized as being those that enable the creation of virtual spaces where people can interact with others. Use of these products is dependent on organizational practices at the individual, group, organizational, and trans-organizational levels of operation. Members of this group have a digital language that is representative of their cultural practices. I've found this language rarely includes definitions that are promoted among members of the AoIR listserve. For instance, Nancy suggested that user profiles are hallmark defintions of online spaces. Profiles are treated differently in work settings, including online spaces. These profiles are often times created by employers, as opposed to employees. These profiles are used for a vari! et! y of reasons directly related to the practice of work, as opposed to something that might enable interactions in online environments. /Gail --------------------------------------- Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant Library & Information Science Research Assistant "Technology enables man to gain control over everything except technology." -- Unknown

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