#week2reflection

[saharraa-blog]

Week 2: Reflection

Finding my ‘No-Space’ around campus was easy because there was only one place that I would always sit in whenever I was wanting peace or to relax. I used white tape to measure out my 10x10 ‘No-Space’ and I did have people looking at me like ‘what is she doing’ but overall it was interesting. During week 2 I felt more organised because I was prepared and it was fun leaving the class and working outside. Week 2 reading covered representation of the environment through Christl Berg who lived in Australia after moving from Germany. Most of her artwork is from her experience in India where she went for holiday.

[jennifervioni]

Online Tools on The Go

Today we were talking about online tools, what is the most effective tool to use in order to complete our projects. I think that people in this world are curious human beings who always try new things, then they’ll decide how is it useful to them, they like it or not, others are using it or not, et cetera. Social media is one of the things they always try, because it’s free; and if you don’t like it, you can just delete your account with one click, or just let it be there.

Those who tried everything even took their times to explain social media one by one. Using the most perfect example, of course. Bacon.

(credit: ooolalina.tumblr.com)

Of course one’s preferences affect the online tools he/she uses. For example, I, myself have tried almost every social media available (facebook, twitter, youtube, tumblr, instagram, myspace,—I know, lame—and reddit) and I prefer twitter and tumblr more than facebook and the others since I don’t really like facebook and twitter and tumblr are the most interesting than the others. I’ve been using those since 2011.

Believe me, tumblr is a bit complicated, but once you understand, it’s addicting.

Oh, and who says tumblr doesn’t have a national anthem?

(credit: gingershanks.tumblr.com)

Diversity is a part of the world, even not as broad as the world, a group also has diversities among the members. Different preferences led to a discussion about which social media is the most effective and the discussion itself will lead to a conclusion. My group has decided to use facebook to communicate and even though I don’t like facebook, but I must say that it is the most effective of all when it comes to sharing things. Democracy works.

Technology creates a network that expand togetherness, I’m conscious now that understanding the relations between technology and communities eliminate the chance of failure of stewardship. To create a relevant community I realise that I have to be able to spot what kind of social process that technology brings and understanding it.

Have a nice day!

[phicphoc-blog]

Me and online communities

   I remember the first online community I ever joined was called Hi5 which was about 9 years ago and shortly after I joined MySpace. I was using Hi5 primarily for chatting with friends and getting to know new people while MySpace was only a place I would go on for listening to music or finding some new bands that I might like. After a while I totally lost interest on both of those online community sites, lost interest on Hi5 because it became a place where only attention seeking people (extreme ones at that) gathered and I also stopped using MySpace as I found out it was way more efficient to find what I wanted to find on other websites.

   Then Facebook came out but I was (for some reason) entirely sure that it would end up like Hi5 so I refrained from creating an account there till 31st May of 2010. After I created an account I only went online just to chat with some of my friends and that was about it (anyone can tell how much I really used Facebook if he/she check out my photo albums with the profile photo being 4-5 years old and all the other photos I'm in where just uploaded from other people and I was just tagged in them).

   I started really using Facebook when I got in the army as it was the only way to be able to keep contact with my friends and family without spending a fortune on cell phone bills. When I was dismissed I found out that I could use Facebook as a medium to check out most of the websites I wanted to, so it's only then that I started getting on Facebook and I found out that it had a lot of positives like being able to find even more new and interesting things through it and that you were able to join groups with the same interests as you. Through those groups you could find out about websites that are more into the interests of those groups. All in all through online communities you can get connected to people with the same interests as you and also get redirected to even more specialized ones through it, so I can see myself using online communities for quite some time into the future.

[bonster3010-blog]

A Personal Social Network Reflection

When it comes to analysing my usage of social networks, I only really use one social network: Facebook. The reason for this is, I am not a huge fan of social networking, in my opinion it is a waste time especially when you look at the rubbish people normally communicate though Facebook at my age (18). I have never understood the popular online culture of Blogging and updating your status with every little detail of your life; I personally don’t care you saw a cute cat, or you just bought a tin of baked beans. There is a limit!

            Contradictory to the statement above I do still update my profile and status however not with every detail and only if I feel people would want to know. So I primary update my status if I achieved or discover something I feel friends and family would like to hear about. For example my old rugby club asked me to keep them up to date with my ‘international career’ and my family asked for updates about school and life etcetera.

But the main function I use Facebook for, is as an organisational tool, it makes it so easy to organise an event whether it is a one off event: I can quickly invite everyone, set a time, a location and discuss any problems and other possibilities with everyone at the same time. Or weekly occurrences like my rugby. Being a member the rugby Facebook group allows me to easily find out match times and location, training sessions and social events. The club officials also upload game photos and match reports which I can easily share.

I also use Facebook for commercial reasons, every summer I run a small Inflatable games company in England, Hertfordshire; BonsterBash I recently made a Facebook page and website (www.bonsterbash.co.uk) to make myself more accessible to the public without having to pay for “real” advertisement. For me Facebook provides “Word of mouth” advertising which is perfect for small companies operating in a local area.

When it comes to further exploring online communities I don’t personally have any real interest, although it its interesting to know how they operate. I prefer to communicate and network in person or email, apposed to a Skype calling, twittering and blogging.

To conclude, perhaps one day once the technology for international video calling has improved and there is no “lag” and it is as clear as face to face, I will become more interested in theses platforms. However ironically I don’t think my interest in blogging will ever grow to the stage were I will personally choose it as a platform.

[magickarlmagic-blog]

Online social interaction

All forums and other content based websites thrive on people submitting and creating their own content. It takes special people that spend more time creating content then viewing it to keep these communities alive. On one website that I am active on releases data on their web traffic for their users and it is always surprising to read. They normally average around 90% of comments and posts to around 10% of their total page views. The website receives around 200,000 page views a day, which means that their content is generated in 20,000 page views is enough to keep the other 180,000 people coming back. This clearly shows the producer/harvester mentality of people in online social communities.

I am a harvester; I scour the internet daily for random tidbits of information and rarely produce my own content. The one exception is the website I mentioned in the above paragraph. I have been a member since 2009 and read through and post on most days. No other social community has the same effect on my posting habits. To try to change this, I decided to finally try to start posting and contributing to probably my most visited online community; Reddit.com.

Their system allows for user to posts interesting pictures/news articles/cats/dogs/ect to be ''upvoted'' by others in the community. This moves the position of the post closer to the front page where the majority of the 1 million unique visits see. The same is done for comments so that they move up and down in the comment section of the site. After some unsuccessful posts of original content I decided to try my hand at posting comments. Their comment section allows users to reply to comments as well creating chains of conversation between users. After a minor successful start (2000+ karma on one post) I have decided to keep posting and try to force myself to comment and contribute to another online community. This is moving me out of my comfort zone but will eventually be helpful.   

[itsmechell0]

Week 2 – Which networks?

(I’m apologize for the late post, problem with OBA’s WiFi connection.)

"Think about your own networks."

Wait… what? Which networks? Well, I have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, DeviantArt, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber.. But wait, can we also consider Skype or Viber as ‘network’? (They’re officially software or application, but since I use them to interact with people, not only family but also, friends, colleagues etc., they can also be called MY network, can’t they?)

     Nowadays, it’s hard to define a ‘network’. It can be everything as long as it involves interactions between its users. In my opinion, I used to consider Skype or WhatsApp as informal networks in regard to social learning. Categorizing them as ‘real’ networks seems to be a bad idea. But after doing some research about the real definition of ‘network’, and also what differentiates it with ‘community’, I came up to the conclusion that applications such as Skype or WhatsApp connect the users and therefore can be called ‘network’.

·  The network aspect refers to the set of relationships, personal interactions, and connections among participants, viewed as a set of nodes and links, with its affordances for information flows and helpful linkages.

·  The community aspect refers to the development of a shared identity around a topic that represents a collective intention—however tacit and distributed—to steward a domain of knowledge and to sustain learning about it.

(source: http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/communities-versus-networks/)

     No one can deny the importance of these networks. They can be used either for individual usage (for example: research, self-study, harvest information), either for collaborative usage (group research, interaction with group members, document sharing).

     Personally, I equally use them for both usages. I used Facebook as one of my personal network and also belong to some groups on Facebook, mostly used for updating group works and adding some group files. It’s even harder to set the limit between individual and collaborative usage since the most influential social networks like Facebook or Twitter are emerging to become a ‘new’ tool for collaborative work thanks to its easy-to-reach, useful aspect (for example, file uploading files on Facebook). So, it might be a really good idea to merely work on one online space like Asana or Basecamp for the group work.

     Speaking about the most valuable, I would say that the usage of networks for collaborative works is way more valuable than individual usage. We can’t really call it ‘network’ if it’s limited to personal information harvesting, if there’s no linkage between people, if it provides no interaction between users. 

     Finally, the new area that I would like to explore by experiencing with my online networks is Business. I would really love to use my online networks for the business usage. But since I couldn’t currently ‘jump’ into this, I did some research about tools that might be helpful for my future plan to explore this new area. This is also one of my group tasks: doing a research about an application called Zoho. This application looks great for the business intention: it provides the website building and is useful to run our own business processes, manage the information and be more productive!

I’m looking forward to exploring this platform in the future; it is unfortunately not free for now!

Have a nice weekend, bloggers! :) 

[falamalinka-blog]

Personal reaserch experiment

But the problem from those times, which phones and online societies solved is that if people didn't make an appointment before and they wanted to see someone the only thing they could do was to go to visit him without any guarantee that he will be at home (terrible if someone had friends in other cities), so they aren't so bad after all.

When i'm thinking about an experiment, which i can do to explore new area or type of use of the Internet first thing, which comes to my mind is to start to use some online apps and tools, because i have never done that and lately i thought that i might really enjoy it, so maybe even start to like other things, which the Internet offers.

[busssh-blog]

A personal research experiment we already started-confusing!

*Sorry for the late post, internet failed* Before this course, I only use to have a Twitter account and Facebook account. I would also use other platforms to find information. Now, due to this course I am using tumblr to hopefully share and give information on other researchers.  However also for the past 2 weeks, my group and I started using some online platforms to experience and analyze it as part of our research. In total, we used/are using about 4 online networking to contact each other and to work collaboratively together.

Even though our group could only have used e-mail to contact each other, we decided that it is not enough to communicate. We first opened a group on Facebook to be able to chat, share documents, pictures etc. We decided on this platform because nearly everyone nowadays has Facebook and it is quite simple and easy to use.  However, Facebook wasn’t such a good idea to edit documents at the same time as a group, and so it lacked this online tool. From the experience we had with Nancy on the platform, www.meetingwords.com; we decided we should all edit the document/report there. So we had opened up the document for this project on that platform, and now we had 3 places online where we could work.  The problem we faced was exactly this; 3 platforms! When we had the next lecture, we encountered that each one of us had used one of these platforms assuming we would be using the same platform. So for example, two people had done their task on meetingwords, where the other one had send me their task via email, and where the other two had worked on Facebook.  This of course caused miscommunication; we didn’t know who had finished their task. We fixed this problem by ‘collecting the tasks’ and re-editing what was done to the actual document, which of course took some time.

As if this confusion wasn’t enough, we decided we challenged ourselves to try out basecamp to complete our project :’) 

Having to work via 4 online networks is challenging! 

 Therefore what I can conclude that a 3-4 online networks could cause some miscommunication and confusion. This could lead to bigger problems, especially if you are working on a serious, big, project with a larger group.  Each one of us have analyzed the tools these platforms offers to differentiate between them at the end of our research. The difficulty is applying and trying out these tools offered! Some of them are really complicated. 

[the-views-of-a-dreamer-blog]

How do we use the social networks?

My social networks are: Facebook, YouTube, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and ect. But the most important for me are three of them because they keep me informed for an information and activities which I cannot find anywhere else. For example, Facebook keeps me in touch with my family and friends. And I can easily contact with people for working issues. It is quite good supporter for investigations and surveys ( very huge source of information). In one word - it is multifunctional. It allows to interact with many different people or just to use it as an individual - for personal issues.

The second is Google. I use this network only for finding information. It is really helpful significant for me. Because you can find between 80 - 90 % of the information which you are looking for without undue effort. The information is frequently updated which makes it better than the books the library. It has faster, easier and smarter process of work. It saves time as well. This is the reason I chose Google.

Last but not at least are LinedIn and YouTube. LinkedIn is more like a community. It is really helpful and provides opportunities for establishing new contacts with people in your professional sphere. It is also comfortable for sharing experience and changing ideas with other people. I use my LinkedIn account to connect with different people from different parts of the world in order to enrich my professional skills and perceptions. Because I want to see and understand other points of view. And to refresh my ideas, to share them as well and get some inspiration and make contacts with people on higher level in the same field.

YouTube is a great network which can cheer you up everytime you need or just when you want to learn something new. It is huge and helpful social network, which is good for finding information or promoting products ... sharing ideas. I use it more individually.

[jstvaiciunaite-blog-blog]

"BUILDERS"

Internet – the thing which is a very good friend for every one of us. It gives us opportunities to be invited to the future building.  We are building future all the time on the internet. If we are searching some information on “GOOGLE”, posting our minds on “TUMBLR”, twitting about everything on “TWITTER”, chatting with friends, posting and playing “farms” on “FACEBOOK” – this means, that we use other people (creator’s) network and we have to pay for it. These money builds our future. People can create something new and new to take our minds, to make us addicted to their networks. Like nowadays there are millions of people who are addicted to “FACEBOOK”. They need it every day, they have addiction to post everything that they have done, what they are doing now or what they would do in the future. Also, people are getting lazy (if they are really interested in being online on some network all the time. (I don’t anything about job)). They can forget how to communicate in reality, be like robots without emotions.

The good point of those public communicating networks is that you can chat with people who are very far from you, you can watch how they feel and how they look now (if they post everything), even you won’t forget about  their birthdays because “FACEBOOK” will remind you about it. (I think that this is the best thing on “FACEBOOK”)

What about my networks. I have few “GMAIL” accounts, but I use only one of them to get important information from everyone. (I have made more accounts because I always forgot my password...) Also, I have “TUMBLR”, but I use it only for University, because I don’t understand blogging point and I don’t really like to post my minds on networks like this, but I must have this one for University and I am quite happy because maybe I will change my opinion about blogging one day. What is more, of course I have “FACEBOOK”. I use it a lot, because I need to communicate with my friends, who live far from me, with my classmates and to know the upcoming events, birthdays. From “FACEBOOK” I can get information about almost everything. That is one of points why I really like it. But I would like to use it less, because it takes very long time... All in all, I think that the best space for communicating is “SKYPE”. I like this a lot. You can chat, talk with people, see them by webcam and do more things. I use it very much; because you can call your family and others for free, see them and so on.

To finish with, I would love to have one big network (bigger than “FACEBOOK”, “SKYPE” and others), where you would be able to do everything in one place. Like to have blog, chat, talk, see, play, post and know everything about events birthdays and etc. I think this kind of network is coming of it already exists...

[ranged3-blog]

Week 2: Research frameworks

The only online network community i use now is facebook. I use it to communicate with other people online the most. There is also a lot of useful stuff to find information about, but facebook is not the platform i use for gathering information, i prefer search engines instead. However, you can always find some interesting posts of other people, who liked some kind of product or service. I only post something like that if I truly like the thing and I think others might. The good thing is that you don't need to surf the internet to find some really interesting websites, videos or articles - they just pop up on facebook, from your friends for you to check it out.

I didn't have specific groups of peole on facebook as I do now, after the studies started. Though now I convinced myself that it can be really useful. Chatting in small groups is convenient and fast. And this is only a small part of what you can do on Facebook.

It also sustains various kinds of apps, features, which come from different providers. Like the TouchGraph feature you suggested. It looks spectacular and I have no doubt that someone will make a good use of it.

I'd like to try the features i didn't use before, but for that i need a reason. Like advertising on facebook, it might be really useful, and It's free. So if I ever need to advertise something, which I'm sure I will, I will definitely consider using such platforms.

Using multiple platforms for different communities is very effective, and can save you a lot of time, because you might have communities that are good in discussing about specific topics.

In conclusion, I make use of all functions i need from Facebook, though I am always open to the new ones, as soon as i feel i can make use of it.

[bonster3010-blog]

A Brief History Of Kiva

  Kiva

This week my personal goal was to explore the investment application of online communities, the website I chose to explore was Kiva.org. The reason I chose Kiva was because it stood out from the rest of the online investment communities, as it was neither a charity nor a business, but a mixture of both. Kiva grants people in poorer parts of the world the chance to apply for a loan; since banks will not loan because the person taking out the loan could not grantee or mortgage their property.

            Kiva relies not on donations, but people’s good will to support unsecure loans by temporary donating funds and although the lender has no grantee of repayment and does not gain any interest on there loan. They can take confidence in the statistics: 98.98% of all loans are fully repaid which is very good considering that they have lent to over 869,627 people. In addition to the obvious reason which is, your money is helping people! And what makes Kiva so great is once your loan is repaid, the same money you originally lent can now be reused to help someone else at no extra cost to you!

            History

Kiva first officially became an organization in October 2005, however the origins of Kiva started a year earlier in April when Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley started work on a new initiative called Kiva their goal was to create a means for poverty stricken parts of the world to access an unsecure loan inventing a whole new approach to charity: instead of blindly throwing money at a poverty in the hope the money will used wisely by loaning the money the person taking out the loan will have to do their best to insure its repaid, this means they will make the most of the loan in order to produce the greatest return.

 Their first success was took place in April the following year. The first 7 Kiva loans totalling $3,500 were issued and by September successfully repaid this success resulted in Kiva being founded as a non-profit organization. Kiva then grow rapidly and by November 2006 they had lent over one million US dollars, in 2007 they received the Draper Richards Foundation award of $300,000 on top of this they then gained a further $250,000 from donations/lenders as a result of a New York times columnist who generated mass publicity from his article about Kiva. 2008 proved an even more prosperous year as they were awarded the three-year $1,015,000 Skoll award for social Entrepreneurship. By 2010 Kiva had lent over $100 million in loans and continues to grow. Recent years Kiva has also began to fund and assist other like non-profit organisation.

I have found Kiva to be an incredible interesting company to research especially when you consider how it came to fruition at such and exponential rate.

[mingyin925-blog]

my own networks

Networks are a part of my daily life, communicating with families and friends, watching the news all around world, etc. I am habituated to gather information through the internet when I met problems. Mostly, networks can help me out or give me a direction about my problems. I appreciate the conveniences that networks and online communities brought to me.

But, I still tend to use online tools more individually. As some defined groups and social networks, I may be interested in the contents people talk about, but I may not join the group, expect some working groups or studying groups. Like those social tools, such as Facebook, sometimes I would like to know what are people around me doing, but I just feel uncomfortable to share many things  there. That is my type.

I think the new way of involving in the network that I want to experiment with is being more interactive. During the observing, more or less, I can get improvements from others’ opinion. I think it is time to participate and share.

[bencebnagy-blog]

A Personal Research Experiment

I see myself as a social being and therefore I thrive off the attention of others. I would be bored and unhappy if I couldn't talk to the outside world, It's just who I am. Throughout this course I have stayed out of my house and have stayed with friends for as long as possible during the day mainly because I don't have internet at home. That short definition of me should show that I do in fact, interact with others. A lot. I take advantage of online spaces such as Facebook and Skype (and now Tumblr) to be able to join and communicate with other communities on the social networks. I am part of multiple groups on Facebook ranging from old high-school friend discussion groups to current discussion groups. These groups allow me to easily keep in contact with all my peers and harvest the relevant information needed. 

Between the two main online networks I use (Facebook and Skype), I find Facebook much more valuable because I have a larger community on it. I can categorize all my friends into groups and share certain, relevant information to each of them. However I do find Skype much more comfortable to use because it is much easier to talk to people through video/ voice chat. The use of that feature helps a lot because its like a massive conference and (in my opinion) conferences are the best way of sharing and comparing ideas easily and quickly.

That is the extent that I use Facebook and Skype for, I feel like that is all I will ever use it for. It doesn't need to be any better, nor should it be worse.

[saskiasmits]

Week 2 - my social networks

Using many online networks for different purposes I can have many different roles in different groups, networks and communities.

On Facebook for example there are many different groups for both friends and communities. There are groups and group conversations that I interact with on a daily or weekly basis, ensuring I know what is happening and what is going on. These are generally groups with close friends or work groups. Next to these, there are groups I interact with when I have time left or if I need information. These are not so much close friends but more contacts in my larger network. I can also use contacts to make use of their ‘we’ network if I need it. This is very useful when doing research.

Another useful platform to communicate with friends is skype (and MSN) which can be used to chat directly with friends. This way I can interact directly with people in real time and get answers directly if I need them, as long as the people I need to communicate with are online.

Lastly, I spend some time on an online chat room from a game site. This is another interesting experience as on these, people do not know who you are and you cannot know for sure who they are but you interact and can discuss anything. This is valuable because you can feel free to discuss without anyone being able to judge you as a person because they don’t know you. However, on this it is very hard to control what information is received as you don’t know the sender of the information. This isn’t a bound or defined group of people but many different people at once. Although often it is the same group of people discussing, many other people in the wider network can join in. Additionally, this is a group where I interact along the way I do not need to join in all discussions and therefore only need to reply when I know I can add useful input.

Overall, facebook is currently most valuable as I have many friends, groups and networks that I keep up. This is important because without it, communicating with a vast amount of people would be a lot more difficult. However, although it is a platform to interact with people, I do not believe it is a platform to document my life, more to share ideas. I am however most comfortable replying to the online chat site with ideas and discussions. However, if giving people personal details comes into account, facebook is where I have most information about me.

[the-views-of-a-dreamer-blog]

What do we learn from the online communities and networks?

While exploring the online spaces and communities we aim to find new inspiration for ourselves and our creativity. Frequently, we visit these communities in order to share ideas and experience on similar topics. These communities are something like a connecting point for people united from same interests. 

In the communities for open innovation and design I find a small world where the meaning of life is innovation and design. On the surface of it seems that the people are the same and their thoughts  as well. But if you look at their ideas and try to understand them carefully, you will find out that they are quite different. And actually they could enrich yourself with new techniques or develop your imagination and inspiration.