S3 post # 3

Susumu's World Mapper

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
It would be helpful if you could quickly understand how to search the maps that you need. There are many ways to find the maps. It would also help if you could easily find the appropriate maps from the result.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
By seeing many maps, you can get quick visions of the world.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
Resources of many kind of maps can be used academically like for essays.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?

S3 post #1

Shintaro's mindmeister

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
You need to know the basic rules such as how to make new bubbles and how to connect the bubbles and so on. It is pretty easy to use if you know the basic idea of the spider web.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
I like the fact that there is no limit of the space to write down all the ideas. You can just keep on spreading the ideas.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
I think you can use this tool academically. You can easily display your ideas of thoughts.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
It is appealing that you can share the spider webs with the other users. You can keep on spreading the ideas using not just your own ideas but the others'.

Yukie's S3 Session

Yukie's S3 Session
Gradefix
http://www.gradefix.com/index.php


Gradefix is a tool to schedule studying time. It calculates how the users should deal with all the homeworks from informations such as the users' studying time in a week and the subjects that they have taken. It saves users' time and enables them to easily check what they have done. Gradefix can remind the users working process by email.

2. My presentation
a) Intro: Teach the Tool (5 mins)
http://picasaweb.google.com/s101232/Gradefix/photo#s5126980586671023570
*Signing up


b)Body
Teach the main feature of the tool

c)Conclusion: SCICU Key Quesitions
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?

Lesson 6 Think and Explain

Think
First we will decide what kind of works each person should do, then we will work on them until the due day. On the due day we will meet up and show what we have done by talking the main points.

Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
It would be helpful if you know how to use programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. Also the understanding of the icons such as cut and paste would save time.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
Using Google Docs is like a combination of Microsoft Word and Internet. It allows the users to post something interesting very easily.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
This could be used for a small presentation for business. By using the Spreadsheet, it enables the users to give more visual information to the viewers.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
This tool may save my time, as I used to prefer working on Microsoft Words rather than the blog's posting tools, I used to copy and paste what I had written on Microsoft Word to some other place on the internet often.

Lesson 5, Think and Explain

Think

1. 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 regularly visit e-mail sites like hotmail and yamata. I check each sites one by one and see if there are any new contents being posted. Some sites send emails to remind the users if they have made new posts.

Explain
Social Computing Key Questions:

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
To use the RSS you need to know whether the sites you want to subscribe gives you feed or not. For example if it has the RSS icon then you can just click on it, and it will automatically subscribe the site.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?\
By subscribing the sites, you do not have to visit each of your favourite sites but just logging on to Google Reader will do all the work. It saves time from clicking the sites and checking what is new.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
It will be very helpful for the marketing business. The world business moves very very fast so you need to keep up on the new informations.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
By subscribing the favourite sites, it enables to know how the sites are perceived in the internet. For example we can know if the sites are popular by checking the amount of people subscribing the sites.

Readings: Kahn & Kellner, pp. 183-185, pp. 190-198

Over 10 years have passed since the creation of the WWW. The state of the online communities requires constant retheorisation. The authors focus on the reactions of the online communities toward the Bush administration since 9/11. The authors explain the situation of the communties standing against the millitarism, terrorism, and other principles that menace with democracy and social justice.

I have never linked the internet with politics. The possibility of the Internet is immeasurable.

Social Computing Key Questions 2:

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
It is not really a skill but I thought that I have to be curious to be a skilled social software user. I know the basic function of the sites though in order to show my individuality I have to do a couple of researches like seeing the help pages.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
Making a personal blog is like having my own bedroom, or personal space, at home. Even if I am sharing home with my family, by I having my own room I can organise my belongings the way I want just like posting my favourite sites on my blog.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
For professional use, the add-ons can reduce time for the research.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
The skills to use convenient tools like add-ons and tabs and all the other things in order to effectively use the limited time. I have to catch up on new tools so I will not have to waste any time.

Barabasi: The Third Link pp. 25-35

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 every people in the world get to indirectly know each other through six people.

2. How is the fabric of society today different from pre-internet society? p. 31
The fabric of society today is different from pre-internet society in respect of the links that hold the informations together.

3. How many more links separate any pair of web pages compared to people in society? What can explain the difference? p. 34
13 more links seaparate any pair of web pages compared to people in society.

4. So far, what ranges of separation have network scientists discovered in different kinds of networks? p. 34
Network scientists discovered the separations of species in food webs, molecules in the cell, scientists in different fields of science, and the neurons in the brain of the C. elegans worm.

5. What does research suggest about the fundamentals of networks? p.34-35
The research suggests that a node has more than one link. If the node can only have one link then the distance between the nodes would be faraway.

6. What is your estimate of your personal number of connections to society? What connections are your strongest?
I am not very sure but I guess six is an adequate number. I would trust the number that came up from a result of a thorough research rather than my random estimate. I think I am strongly connected to my family.

Where I used to live

This was my house in Milan. I lived on the 7th floor. Living in Italy influenced me deeply. I did not go outside and often drew pictures in my bedroom.

Social Computing Key Questions 1:

1. What are the main skills needed to use social software?
First of all, writing skill is needed. Also it is easy to use social software if you can quickly understand how the site is functioned.

2. What are the affordances (what the software makes possible, what it impedes)?
You can easily share informations with many people and can comment each other's pages. However because there are far too many people online, you might worry if it is safe to show all your personal informations.

3. How can the technology be used to network professionally and connect users to learning resources?
Using our personal blogs as our resume.

4. What learned skills and understandings may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
It is important to know what kind of "equipments" are available for you. For example, until I took this sophomore class, I never knew anything about the e-portfolio.

Barabasi: The First Link

1. What elements or factors were critical to Paul's success in spreading the Christian message?

Removing the barriers when converting to Christianity, such as circumcision, and spreading the messages to the large communities were the critical factors to Paul's success in spreading the Christian message.

2. Barabasi asks the question, "Could it happen again?" (p.4), what is your answer?

It might happen again. I do not have any religious faith so it is difficult to imagine, though spreading of the messages can be done very quickly with the use of internet. Remember how fast YouTube became famous (Alhough YouTube is not religion).

3. What new kinds of maps have been made of our interconnectivity (p.5)? What kinds of interconnectivity would you like to see mapped?

Our interconnectivity made maps of the Internet, companies, interaction between species in ecosystems, genes, and so on. These maps enabled to uncover many mysterie, and some new possibilities emerged. I would like to see maps of talented people's brains, such as artists and musicians, and see if talent really exists.

4. What is the 'real surprise' (p.5) that such maps have revealed? Personally, does this surprise you?

The surprise is that although networks are very complex, the structure and evolution of them were simple. Personally, it shocked me a little. It is like the world of nature. They are complicated yet simple as well.

5. How does the author define the nature of most scientific research in the 20th Century? What is the problem associated with such an approach (p.6-7)?

By nature, most scientific research in the 20th Century gave its focus on components. Researchers thought that they had to know the parts to know the whole. However, because those pieces were linked to something else, it was not very effective.

6. What does Barabasi predict will be the new focus of scientific research in the coming era (p.7)? What is your view?

The new scientific research in the coming era will focus on networks. Rather than looking at the components, looking at the links give us different perspectives. Perhaps the networks are significant just like relationships between friends and family are very important in our daily life. New perspectives can be risky but it can also give us new discoveries.

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