Gina’s EME6635 Journal

Sorry this is so late!

• Readings
• Read everyone’s blog posts
• Commented on some of those posts
• Read and commented on the message board
• Tweeted during the eLearning Guild conference
• Met some edutweeps IRL!!!
• Wrote blot posts

I was going to post this with in BB, but you can’t embed video in BB. BB is not very produsage friendly!!!

Here are some mashups I love:

I blogged about this on my work blog, mostly because I was representing work. Here are the links:

Day 1

Day 2

Official Prompt for Week 4:

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

There are several methods I use to judge the value of expertise:

1. If the information is coming from a blog post, I look at their about page. Where do they work? What is their educational background? What have they published?
2. If the information comes from any other source, I google the person looking for a blog (and an about page).
3. I look at who comments on their posts. I look at who the person links to, and who links to that person.

To be honest, I do the exact same thing with face-to-face settings. I go looking for their online presence, or for what others say about them online. You can craft an image and message face-to-face, but you can’t control what others say about you online.

It’s my first time, so send me good thoughts!

This is the conference. Tell me if you see a speaker I should say hi to!

This week is crazy for me (outside of class). I taught a virtual class Monday and Tuesday. That was exhausting, way more work than teaching a face-to-face class. Today I have a break, but tomorrow and Friday I’ll be attending the eLearning Guild’s Instructional Design Symposium. Oh yeah I am presenting there as well.

Plus we are having a party Sunday. Can it be next week please?

Tonight I’m going to try and review some of my classmates’ “produsage” projects. I’m taking the train into Boston, so I am hoping to get the readings done.

Here’s what I did for Week 3:

• Made it through the Bruns reading
• Worked on the wiki for my “produsage” product
• Advertised my project wiki – on twitter, on both blogs
• Posted 5 blog posts
• Participated on the discussion boards
• Participated in #lrnchat
• Shared links on twitter
• Read and commented on classmates’  blogs

I was going to write a post based on the parts of this week’s Bruns reading where he sort of talks about agile, but seems to get it all wrong.

Instead I want to talk about Wikipedia.

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is defined (by wikipedia) as being “a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again.” Palimpsests were a means to transmit information in a secret manner. Someone would write a message on a leather tablet after scraping off any old information. But the old information would still be partially legible.

I don’t understand Bruns’ comparison of Wikipedia to a Palimpsest. Is he saying that the edit trail of a Wikipedia entry becomes some secret message about the explanation for that post?

Governance

I think more care should be given to the idea of who governs the information that is accepted as truth on Wikipedia. The so-called “god-king” of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, does not exactly have the best moral track record. He talks a good talk when it comes to transparency, but when it came to his girlfriend (the Anne Coulter of Canada) he made sure to keep her Wikipedia page in good shape. (She released IMs after he dumped her – on Wikipedia).

So the guy is a scumbag, it happens. He also spent lots of Wikipedia money on fancy travel and expenses. Remember, Bruns calls this guy the God-king of the Wikipedians. The folks who decide what is truth as far as Wikipedia goes. He is the one who sets the process for how the people who can delete or even lock entries on Wikipedia.

If he is the guy in charge, can we really trust the “truth” of Wikipedia?

Stephen Colbert has had several segments on Wikipedia. He tells his viewers to change Wikipedia to ridiculous things, such as the population of African elephants is increasing, or that Reality is a commodity - and his viewers make the changes.

But he has a point about reality being a commodity. Corporations pay people to make sure any Wikipedia references to their products. This means anyone with enough money can enforce their version of reality on the rest of us. Even the God-King of Wikipedia did this for his girlfriend.

So what is my point

My point is this: human nature is not such that we can expect a true democratization of information. There will always be behind the scenes dealings in which the more powerful will be able to have the final say. There is more to Wikipedia than the Wikilove and good will, and its dangerous not to point out the potential dangers of trusting a crowd-sourced encyclopedia.

Isn’t it weird that a comedy show points it out?

Here’s Colbert on Wikiality – or reality is what is commonly agreed upon:

Here is is interviewing Jimmy Wales:

Since I don’t think all of you are following the FriendFeed group, you may have missed this link about what twitter use in K-12 looks like.