Lesson6:Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Think
What do you currently do when a teacher asks you to collaborate with other students on a project?What do you now if you want to show someone else what you have done?What do you do if you need to work on it at the same time?

First, I usually have a casual meeting with other members at Shin-D. In the meeting, I exchange ideas, and e-mail address of mobile-phone and PC. Second, If the project will be long more than months and group has more than 5 members(almost), maybe I create mailing-list in order to keep in touch and manage schedule. Third, in order to show someone else what I have done, I attach file to e-mail and send members. If I need to work with others at the same time, I meet actually because I feel that it is more difficult to meet on the Internet.

Explore

Social Computing Key Questions:
1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
While using social software, needed skill is to communicate efficiently not only in face-to-face meeting but also on the Internet .

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
Google Document enables us to save our time and difficulty of collaboration. However, I think face-to-face meeting can inspire and motivate us in different way from online collaboration.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
Thanks to Google Document, people must be able to work on same project at the same time wherever they live.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
I am surprised by how Google Document is convenient for collaboration, since I always feel that group work is heavy and hard to finish than work alone. The skill to share online will promote my work in digital and busy age.

Rei's S3 session

1.Review of tool

URL: http://www.diigo.com/

Diigo is a new social boolmarking utility. In addition to letting us bookmark pages and share those bookmarks with others, it also lets us highlight parts of pages (text or images), and store those highlights not only in Diigo account, but also on the Web pages themselves. We can also attach Post-it-like notes to the highlights on Web pages, and they can be private or shared.

2.My Presentation

URL:http://www.flickr.com/photos/19191994@N04/sets/72157603015945033/show/

A. Introduction: Present your summary screen cast or screen shots, stop and explain whenever you feel it is necessary, or to respond to questions or comments from classmates (5 min)

Using screen shots and refering to main feature of Diigo, I will present the reasons why I chose Diigo, and why Diigo can be efficient tool for academic use .

B.Body: Teach the Tool (15 min)
How to bookmark
How to highlight
How to add sticky notes
How to share pages with sticky notes

C.Conclusion:Lead a critical review of the content and functionality of the apprication using the SCICU key questions:

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
2. What are the affordances (what does the service make possible, what it impedes)?
3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?

Lesson5:Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Think
Which sites do you visit regularly? What provisions do you currently make to keep yourself up to date on new content posted to your favourite sites?
I visit regularly blogs, news sites, w3, mixi, and online tool such as Gmail, RSS reader, Alc(online simple Japanese-English dictionary), and Weblio(online Japanese thesaurus). I save online tools on bookmark toolbar of Portable Firefox, and I use RSS reader for blogs and news site. Yet now I have to reduce the number of RSS feeds I subscribe because sometimes it takes long to load the page of RSS reader.

Explore
Which of your favourite sites provide an RSS feed? Which ones don't? Can you think why not?
Blogs and news sites provides RSS feeds but online tools and old pages don't. It might be caused by the difference of its contents and the newness of the RSS system.

Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
The skill to assess the importance and property of each Web page is needed to use RSS reader efficiently. Too much feeds will be the stumbling block to get the information on timely basis.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
RSS saves our time, opportunity to get new information, and the cost to access Web pages in vain.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
I assume that many journalist and the management actively use RSS feed to keep up to date with daily, international news and others ideas posted on blogs.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
Skimming and scanning skills may promote to get information by RSS especially feeds from news sites.

Kahn and Kellner:"Virtually Democratic:Online Communities and Internet Activism"

Summary
Kahn & Keller described the Internet as a "consisted terrain" in which alternatives subcultural forces and online communities are articulated in opposition to more reactionary, conservative, and dominant groups.
There are potential risks to promote terrorists' act, for example, Al Qaeda used the Internet to plan the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. And the political battles between "hacktivists" and governments or corporations are occuring in the Internet.
However, the authors accepted as these situations are at least in part a positive development that opens radical possibilities for a greater range of opinion, new models of virtual and actual political communities, and novel forms of direct action.
Using information and communication technologies(ICTs), online communities such as blogs and wikis can promote democracy and social justice on local and global scales, therefore, the authors suggested two points. First, those interested in the politics and culture of the future should be on the important role of the alternative public spheres. Second, critical cultural theorists and activists have to educate students around the cultural and subcultural literacies in order to enable them to participate in the ongoing struggle inherent cultural politics.

My reaction
I agree the authors' opinion that the globalization-from-below will be increasing. For example, 10/15 was the "Blog Action Day" which newly established this year. On the day, bloggers around the world are encouraged to write post freely on a same theme like "environment".

Lesson4:Delicious - A Personal & Social Study Tool

Think
How do you currently save and store favorite Web pages? What provisions do you make to be able to access them whenever and wherever you need them?

I currently use several ways to save and store my favorite Web pages depends on how often I need to access. For example, bookmark toolbar of Firefox Portable, RSS reader, social bookmark service called "Hatena bookmark" offered by "Hatena Corporation", and Google mail. Mainly I use bookmark toolbar for saving my everyday-used Web pages such as Gmail, RSS reader, w3, Alc(online simple Japanese-English dictionary), and Weblio(online Japanese thesaurus). I also found that it is useful for me to put not full name but simple icon of these bookmark on toolbar.

Explore
What other ways can you think of to publicize your Delicious username so that others might access what you know? What are benefits can you identify in participating in an open knowledge network such as Delicious?

Maybe adding Delicious username on the profile of "mixi" can be another way.
Delicious is good for not only establishing new relationships with others who have same interests, but also for rebuilding relationship with old friends. It enables us to discover other dimensions and various interests of old friends which can not be showed easily in daily life.

Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
It is needed for using Delicious effectively to develop skills to choose appropriate tags, and to search Web pages and persons who have same interests within Delicious.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
Delicious can help us to organize bookmarks, to build and reinforce human networks, and to inspire new interests.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
I am not sure yet about professional use of Delicious, but the system of tag must be convenient to find and organize a lot of information for academic writing.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
I found that Delicious is more useful than "Hatena bookmark" for academic use due to its worldwide popularity in various academic field.

Barabasi: The Third Link

1. What is the principle of six degrees of separation? What number of social links does any one person need to be connected to global society? p. 30
The principle of six degrees of separation is that any pairs of two people are separated on average by six links from each other regardless where they are.

2. How is the fabric of society today different from pre-internet society? p. 31
Due to the recently-emerged system of URLs, our societies are stitched together.

3. How many more links separate any pair of web pages compared to people in society? What can explain the difference? p. 34
Any pages of the Web is on average nineteen clicks away from any other, while people in society are separated by only six other people. The difference between six to nineteen is caused by the factor that the Internet is huge far more than our society.

4. So far, what ranges of separation have network scientists discovered in different kinds of networks? p. 34
Network scientists discovered a wide variety of networks, such as, network of food webs, mollecules in the cell, scientists in different fields, and the neurons in the brain of the C.elegans.

5. What does research suggest about the fundamentals of networks? p.34-35
The research suggests that as we add more links, the distance between the nodes suddenly become very short. And the origin of small separation is explained as a logarithmic term presented in a mathematical formula.

6. What is your estimate of your personal number of connections to society? What connections are your strongest?
I'm not sure about the number of connections, but maybe I have almost ten type of connections to society so far. For example, family, schools, cram schools, neighborhoods, church, piano, intern, part-time, volleyball club, and getting friend with someone who is friend of a friend. And I think the connection related to my school days is strongest.

Lesson3: The Browser as Personal Work Environment

Think
What arrangements do you have to make now to be able to work on whatever you want to wherever you are?

I have used: USB drive, CD ROM, and windows mobile called "W-Zero3 [es]." Windows mobile can contain Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF viewer, and other software almost as much as I want. I have been using Firefox for years in my laptop, but mainly at home since there are not enough coverage area where I can access the Internet by wireless LAN. Sometimes I bring out my laptop, but it was limited into off-line activity. So Portable Firefox is exactly the tool what I needed. And I also use social bookmarking service called "hatena bookmark" at everywhere, and feel that tag system is convenient. In addition, G-mail is useful not only for organizing my e-mail(I onforward e-mail received at my cellular phone) but also for saving data without using the PC's memory.


Explore
View a couple of these screenshot tours 1 2 3 4 showing how different users have developed a personal work environment in Firefox (FF). Most users have provided details on what extensions or tweaks they've made to develop their browser as a personal work environment. Take notes on some of the features that look interesting.

Viewing these various screenshot was exciting, and I was stimulated to develop my own work environment in Firefox. I'm interested in Add-on of: "PDF Download," "Menu editor," "How'd I Get Here", "Adblock Plus," "Download Statusbar," "Showcase Sidebar," and "Stylish" so far. And I also found "Diigo" is very usuful for university student.


Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
In addition to computer literacy and communicative skill, active attitude to participate in discussion with other users is needed to improve and develop social software.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
Social soft ware enables and encourages us to deepen our knowledge not only by solitary activity but also by mutual conversation. For example, "Diigo" is called as "social annotation" while ordinary process of reading, highlighting, and annotating is usually done alone.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
Social bookmarking survices might be useful tools for organizing academic paper since it needs a lot of references.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
Since Firefox and other social software are becoming useful day by day, the skill to check news and keep up with the evolution may promote.