Tagging and Tag Clouds for assessment

On browsing the NLab conference mentioned below, I came across Jess Laccetti’s blog (one of many), which (sorry Jess) I haven’t kept up with in ages – more shame on me really, because it’s a great blog focused on a lot of stuff we’re interested in here.

Anyway, in her post on the subject of tagging, Jess discusses some ways that tag clouds can be used to attract readers to your blog, - but also something of particular interest to me, which has surfaced on a pretty regular basis, both in the day-to-day and more generally on this pathfinder: How can we use Web 2.0 for innovative activities and possibly assessment with students? And this is often for courses that aren’t focused on new media issues or learning how the technology works. What Jess suggests is using tag clouds for two-way interaction between teachers and students and also for enabling students to analyse and compare the use of specific topics within texts…

Jess writes
We could generate tag clouds (of work that is handed in electronically) of the student's most-used words. Wouldn't that be a good way of showing students why it's necessary to avoid repetition if they can actually *see* the repetition? We could also use tag clouds for our lecture notes or powerpoint presentations etc...to help students get an overview of the key points we're trying to share with them. What about generating tag clouds of 18th C. lit. and current lit. to see how vocabulary changes?

This would definitely be worth investigating…and could easily create a basis for discussion in seminars. It could potentially be used in any subject area.. in Humanities for instance the idea could be adapted for almost any subject we teach. Interestingly, Jess also predicts that we’ll start seeing visual tags and maybe sonic tags. I can only imagine!

NLab Social Networks Conference

If you don’t know already, registration is now open for the NLab Social Networks Conference, 19-20 June 2008 at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

In 2008 NLab is exploring the power of social networks in business and there’s an impressive line up of presenters on many aspects of networking

Speakers include
Andrea Saveri, Institute for the Future, Palo Alto and Steve Clayton, Microsoft UK plus David Asch, De Montfort University - Jim Benson, Modus Cooperandi - Roland Harwood, NESTA - Shani Lee, NLab - Chris Meade, Institute for the Future of the Book - Toby Moores, Sleepydog - Vijay Riyait, iQubed - Sue Thomas, De Montfort University - Ken Thompson, and more to be announced...

Also see the range of subsidies (including for DMU students and staff) and some bursaries available for Businesses in the East Midlands.

Social networking – build don’t ban! – Donald Clark – Executive Board Member UFI

Donald Clark’s session blew my mind away. His charismatic and amiable demeanour complimented his informative and candid session which was peppered with light-hearted humour.

Donald demonstrated that Social Networking (SN) is redrawing the boundaries of the web and that it’s not just mere chit-chat with friends, but in organisations can be tamed to yield great benefits in training and development too. He further went into issues surrounding rolling-out SNs in organisations by talking through benefits for employees and the company and legal issues.

Donald cleared misconceptions and called on the executives and policy makers to wake up and not ignore SN, as shunning these will only be at the company’s ultimate detriment. He further added not to be scared of legal issues but ‘Police through policies’. Where else will you find a tool that is not restricted by organisation or distance and enables a sense of community, bonding experiences, and instant expert access at your convenience on your computer.

Donald did confess that “there are still lots of people who faff around on the Internet”, however HR departments need not have knee-jerk reactions and ban the Internet because some people procrastinate daily tasks by virtual loitering. But harness the power for great business gains. Donald went on to give some examples of great uses of the Internet, and creative and innovative ways of uses of the Web.

Kids stuff
Donald conveyed his experience at a dinner party where he had a ‘tiff’ with a friend who revealed that he was to ban his child from the Internet. It turned out that the friend’s son was spending most of his time on Instant Messengers chatting to his friends. Donald tried to explain to him that the lingo franca of the new generation is IM, and that they multi-task (play a game, listen to music, chat with there friends, and do their homework concurrently). He went on to further describe that when he is away abroad and calls home all he gets is ‘grunts’ from his children on the telephone, however to his surprise they have a full-blown conversation on MSN Messenger! Donald now uses this way to communicate with his children when away. With this story Donald was send out a message that adopting the various ways of communication you can get to different people; this can only be good for an organisation.

Most of the resources in an organisation are spent on formal learning as empirical results suggest that most learning occurs informally. So why is Facebook and IM banned which is based around you? When the Time person of the year was for 2006 was you, as you own the Information Age.

Donald then went on to show examples of companies that benefited from using innovative methods in their line of work, but first used the example of Professor Walter Lewin from MIT who finds different ways to demonstrate complex parts to physics. However, along the way has emerged as a international Internet guru, and has a cult following at M.I.T. It all started in the pursuit of making his lectures more enjoyable to students. I thought to myself when hearing about the Professor, can we not adopt various ways to keep our staff energised?

Professor Walter Lewin demonstrates how a pendulum works.

Cadbury Schweppes
Amongst the blue chip companies Cadbury Schweppes was one of the first to adopt blogs and podcasts in recruitment. The amount of national coverage and PR it received was phenomenal; it had a direct effect on raising applications by 40%.

IBM Thinkspace
IBM developed a tool that uses various social networking techniques to provide a virtual space for staff to submit new ideas and improve processes. Using tagging, personal profiles, and collaborative communication the system would see an idea through it’s inception through to its implementation (or rejection). Amongst other things Thinkspace was used for induction purposes where new staff could get a wealth of information from other more established colleagues. After 18 months, it was estimated that the value delivered (cost reduction and quality improvements) by Thinkspace was a whopping $400 million!

Second Life and Gender-related discrimination
Donald gave a great example of how a male could empathise with female discrimination; he said that if someone wants to really learn about Diversity, take gender for instance, try living as a woman in Second Life for 2 days and you’ll really see the issues and discrimination around being a women.

Donald then also finished of his session passing the stage on to another speaker.

The power of Facebook

The BBC News website carried this report on the power of Facebook to change events (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7149588.stm)- and in this case legislation - in Canada. Not only is this an interesting short case study but it resonates with our own situation - Richard may yet save The Pump and Tap!

Facebook Research

Some Research on Facebook for your reading:

Bumgarner

Web2.0: Security, Privacy, Safety & Legalities

This is a mini response to Richard's "The great Blackboard Facebook mash-up: part two". The issues that Richard refers to in his post have been occupying my thoughts to recently.

I must admit i find myself being a bit blaze about the situation because the massive educational advantages are so strong that it seems criminal not to leverage these fantastic tools to best advantage. With all the talk of security, safety & legalities it's got the whole 'health and safety legislation' feel to it where for either honest or obstructive reasons the most important aspect of education the learning is stifled and creativity nullified.

That said, we at DMU just like any other organisations need to stop skirting around the issue and really identify what the problems are. Are there issues - well let's nail it down one way or the other and start developing some policies - i think i working group needs to look into this.

So where is the security threat coming from? is it from Hackers or from the organizations that are providing the service. I am just about to post messages in various learning networks i am involved with along the lines of "have you ever experienced i case of hacking into your social networking site, wiki or blog". This threat is often spouted, but i have not heard of this being a big problem at all.

So with regard personal data, contributions, data tracking of activity, my question is who is the real danger from? Strikes me that if my first theory is not a big problem then the threat comes from the organizations offering the web 2.0 services.

So institutions like ourselves need to scrutinize privacy policies of sites like blogger, facebook or maybe just google and yahoo! We might find an unpalatable truth that there is not a great deal that can be done, and then choices have to be made.

One choice is creating your own social network with a trusted partner or in house, which can achieve a lot and be effective, but this will not get away from the isolationist approach that will deny access to the world and vice versa.

wrapped up in all of this are personal privacy, security and safety of individual students and the many legal issues that will be faced by institutions and individuals. So do we blaze on ahead with no regard, shy away from the educational advantages or develop a policy that can address any concerns?

ps: on the specific point about retrospectively deleting comments - if you withdraw from a site. If you make a comment, then that's it part of history done - it's part of the conversation - would be a bit strange to me to retrospectively keep stripping comments out when people leave a site. This is one of the issues that students need to be aware of - it is difficult to take things back, comments, photos, videos etc - so be careful about what you are doing?