Week 12 – Readings

I like virtual worlds and I also support the initiatives taking place within technology and policy making with respect to virtual projects.  I also agree that virtual technologies and programs will definitely have a profound effect on learning and development of personal education; such as virtual museums, libraries, interest communities, fine arts, music, schools, and the like.  However, I do not condone younger audience getting too involved with virtual games -no matter how advance the virtual gaming applications are or how bigger the commercial rewards they may offer. I think it is very addictive and many parents complain about this addictive aspect of these games, and I personally do not see how this demographic could learn anything significant through gaming. 

 

Although, Freitas do not table ant strong opinions to support of discourage these games, I think this article somewhat pushes the theme forward.  Though, it may appear small-minded and too conventional, I strongly discourage virtual gaming for children. I have personal experiences and it is just atrocious when kids get on full board with these highly addictive so called leisure activities.  I have witnessed my niece playing all kinds of games and I have not seen her learning anything but simply memorizing the answers and learning to make use of the loop holes of the application – I could hardly call that learning.  Therefore, for the very same reason, I did not enjoy the Richard Van Eck post either.

 

I have to agree with the Oblinger’s paper that games have become a part of our culture.  It is also not difficult to believe that 50% adults in UK play games.  Virtual gaming is a wonderful way of socializing and relaxing.  It may also provide some sort of learning and knowledge on different subjects for adults.  Finally, virtual applications are great when the technology is utilized for crating useful and constructive purposes – I personally love the idea.  And similar to profound and very useful virtual applications, gaming industry also seems to be proliferating in to our society, but I think it should be kept away from kids, especially from the ones who are under 10 years of age.  Really, how many individuals do we know who can drive a racing car or shoot a target in real life just because they have a high score on virtual race or a war?

Week 10 – Social networks – readings

               It is almost possible for one to be misapprehended that social networks exist only within the Web-world.   Though Social networking is a growing field of study that seems to make a huge buzz among the contemporary community, the phenomenon of Social networks has been around since the dawn of time, only the identification of the term is new – human civilization was based and found upon sharing, storing, and dissemination of individual knowledge.  I certainly was under a false impression that social networking is mostly used by teens to “stay cool” and by professionals as a vehicle of knowledge generation.  This idea is backed up by the articles Barrett, whose piece humorously exemplifies how popular these tools are among the teens; Williams’ article exhibits his personal enthusiasm and pride he takes in being a part of the network almost at its inception.  I certainly was surprised to realize that Web social networks are a common place for everyman.  This notion of social networks attracts contemporary professionals from various industry segments.  And, these individuals are attempting to explore helpful and secure methods of using these tools. 

              As mentioned in Roush’s article DOPA and other legislations are trying to stop the abuse of the useful intentions of these tools.  However, Jenkins raises a very valid contention to DOPA.  When analyzing the matter even on the surface, I too accept that legislating exclusion strategies may hinder the potential usage of these networks, and the irony is these social networks were founded upon the principle of inclusion and proliferation.  However, with all due respect to security and individual privacy, I am biased towards Jenkins on this matter; simply because my personal belief is alleviating the disparity of access to knowledge is the future.  Moreover, our profession, information science, is based upon this concept.  I do not think I have enough knowledge to agree or oppose the matter; I should be better read on the topic to table my thoughts in a constructive manner.  However, one does get a comfortable feeling about the social networks and about its future upon realizing that there are active initiatives that are emerging to make these common spaces more secure.

Week 8 – Readings (tagging, and Folksonomies)

As recommended by Amanda, Kroski article tells it all…… The article enrapture the essence of Folksonomies by a single the phrase ”the Wisdom of Crowds”  The key points of the article were

• For Folksonomies no expertise are required –it is a everyman’s phenomenon 
• Folksonomies allow Fluidity and currency
• Unlike traditional taxonomies which are based on exclusion, these are based on inclusion 
• Traditional taxonomies takes a long time to construct and extremely rigid as they are less adaptive.  Also, comparatively, traditional tools takes a lot more resources on construction and maintenance (changes, inclusions, etc)
• People do not have to depend on another’s decision for categorization – such as a cataloguer.
• Folksonomies allow us to look in to others perceptions and offer insights into their behaviors.  This also, allows us to see thongs differently and discover concepts and themes that we may have not thought of before.
• The small learning curve attracts users.
• These tools pave a path to categorize the booming information resources which would be impossible through the traditional categorizing tools.

 I also like the way she linked the long-tail concept on to Folksonomies. Wikipedia piece, strengthens the Kroski’s arguments and also provides a little bit more on the conceptual and definition aspects on tagging and Folksonomies.  However, Wikipedia only states the facts and does not offer the materials that would provoke contention or arguments.  And, Kroski’s article, how much ever I liked it, is a little biased on the Folksonomies concept and does not strongly pose deficiency of the tool.  However, Quintarelli, on the other hand, offers both sides of the story by stating the weaknesses of these Folksonomy tools, such as

• Relatively restricted corpus
• Pre-defined categories
• Stable and restricted items
• Clear edges

 

I am yet to read the rest of the readings.  I shall post my comments subsequently.

 

Week 6- Readings & Case studies

Wikis

 

I have only looked at the top three case studies, up to now, for this week.  I will get to the others later, and if they are worth commenting on- I shall publicly critic them (I really hope people would be more merciful with my work).

Bull Run Library

I hate this wiki.  What is that all about? 

I instantly disliked it; and, I did not think I should spend time exploring why I dislike this wiki.   

Butler WikiRef 

I loved this wiki.  I loved the organization of the site and the presentation and many other things. 

The reasons why I liked:

• The first page itself gives an idea of what the wiki is all about. 
• The overall organization of the wiki is simple and the headings used are descriptive. 
• The little box that tells the essence of the wiki – this piece of information box has been able to encapsulate the total functionality of the wiki site very effectively.
• The content is VERY good.  It is apparent that this is not a large collection; and; though it does not follow any fancy structure, whatever the materials available is thoroughly and concisely covered in the content.

 The reasons why I DIS-liked:

• The only confusing thing that I found was, the dis-functionality of the breadcrumbs; which was a real throw-off.

Week 7 – case studies

I like the Librarything.com; I think that is a very neat way of getting on with the simple technology available and making the best out of it.  I liked it mainly because of the simple structure that enables one to get an immediate start.  Most of the technology thingies makes you take long awareness sessions (mostly through tutorials or tours) and by the time you end the tutorial you have forgotten the reason you went to the Website, in the first place – this happens to me a lot.  So I avoid these kinds of web-thingies.  However, I like this site.  It is sweet and simple !

Though not my favorite, I did like the PennTags.  It is very visual and, unlike many other tagging sites, it does not clutter your train of thoughts through busy visuals – which again irritates me over and above my tolerance level.  I spent a long time trying to figure-out the reason for the strong and effective visual impacts of the site, which somewhat followed the same criteria as Fliker, but had a much better structure to it.  I thought it was mostly due to following a practice “less is more”, the length of the tag annotations were kept to a minimum and on the tag cloud there were only a few popular tags and the rest were just tags– which is not the case with other tagging tools.  Many tagging tools that allow tag-clouds, have levels of popularity for the tags; because of which, almost all the tags gets a rank and they appear on the main page with different sizes according to their popularity.  As I perceive Web as a digital visual environment, too many variations is not a good strategy.  It would only confuse the reader. 

Anyways, the above are just my comments.  I am pretty sure you may NOT agree with me, but hay, it is just one person’s opinion!

Week 7

As mentioned in the Lee Rainie interview questions, Weinberger’s answer was that the usage of tagging would be increased in the future.  His reasons were the advancement in the technology trends as well as the users’ realization of the benefits provided by the Web-based content and the importance of acquiring the ability of managing these resources themselves.  As a person who is discovering these new trends, I too have to agree with his reasons.  However, I do see a problem with the finding viable mechanisms to deal with the overwhelming boom of information and the growth of ones own bookmarks and tags. 

As mentioned in my comments I also liked Hammond’s article; mostly because, his art of explaining and the pragmatic aspect of addressing the issues. I have to say that I particularly like the quote on his piece on tagging mentioned below, the quote has managed to extract the essence of the tradeoffs of the tagging tools.

“Ontology is a good way to organize objects, […], but it is a terrible way to organize ideas, and in the period between the invention of the printing press and the invention of the symlink, we were forced to optimize for the storage and retrieval of objects, not ideas.“

Week 3 – I love this week’s readings

       Even with reluctance, I must say that I liked Jacob Neilson’s piece on blogs.  I personally think that he is an armchair theoretician who does not practice his own medicine.  However, I always liked his way of presenting theories and ideas in classically simple and practical manner.  I especially, liked the way he

• Distinguished conventional Web sites from a blog, the similarities and the differentiations among the two tools.
• The acceptable places to bend the Web publishing rules for blogging and the blogging best practices to be followed
• The pragmatic way of identifying the problems of current blogs

      He has been able to address most of the issues that has been bugging me ever since I started reading blogs. 

 

      The above practical and theoretical aspects covered by Neilson were backed by both Karen Schneider on The Ethical Blogger and Blogging Strategy 101: A Primer, by Scout. 

 

      Further, the Scout article goes on explaining the things to bear in mind depending on the purpose of your blog.  He also emphasized the aspects that a blogger should get him/herself acquainted with before plunging on to being a bloger.  I personally think that the above concept is an important aspect, as in information science credibility is everything. Therefore, if you have messed up your pen-name by publishing junk, nobody would be interested in reading the pieces that you write as a mature writer – that would be a huge disappointment.

Week 2 – Readings, Cases, and research

Hello All,

 

As I have mentioned before, I was not a big fan of blogging.  However, when I read more about blogs and as I went through the cases for this week,  I realized the benefits offered by blogs.  For an example,  instead of crowding the main Website with tit-bits of information about the institution or the individual, blogs could be used as a cool way of presenting additional information, alerts, news, etc. 

However, as I spent some of my time exploring blogs by individuals and institutions that catered to personal as well as business needs, I have to say that there are many blogs that confuse people.  As individuals’ personal blogs may have different expectations and purposes for their blogs, I decided to comment only on the business blogs.  As I explored the 4 cases assigned for this week, I must say that I liked the ‘ Georgia State University Library – Library News and Subject Blogs’ the best.  Even though, the clolours were somewhat disturbing, it followed a clear organization pattern

• Topics were arranged on subject
• Clear subject headings
• The blog page clearly states that it is a blogs page
• The poage had ‘Alerts’ 

 The Madison-Jefferson County Public Library was also good; and though, Ann Arbor District Library was a little dry, it too was good.  However, I got completely lost in  western springs history.

Though I appreciate the cause of blogs, I still do not understand why blogs do not follow the good practices of Web design; especially when blogs are a Web based tool.  For example, Web friendly fonts and writing styles. 

 

Note: I hope to add a little more to this post after reading more of the assigned literature.

When I was browsing the web I found some good literature on “Tagging.”  Even though “tagging” was not one of our course topics, I thought if there is anyone who wants to know more about tagging or has no idea what tagging is, these few articles would help – because they certainly helped me.  You could find them on del.icio.us.