Web 2.0 Exploration

     As a product manager, I tend to be an advocate of rapid prototyping for designing and developing networked knowledge activities.  Agile project management  or  design thinking process  is typical of software product development process. Iteration is one characteristic of these processes, which underscores the creation of prototype preceding a final product and its continuous revision based on collected insights and feedbacks of users. Rapid prototyping is similar. Though this iterative process is gaining popularity nowadays with striking advantages against the traditional linear process, it is important to note under which conditions the process can be conducted.       From my perspective, there are several questions to ask when considering the rapid prototyping approach.  1. Is it feasible to collect learners' feedback regularly? 2. Is the team's culture, structure, resource and capabilities supportive of an iterative approach? 3. To which extent can the prototype illustr

     The six networked knowledge activities as recommended by Dennen include collect, curate, share, broker, negotiate and construct. I think they are different in actions, roles and outcomes but sharing some guiding attitudes.        The first is to be respectful. Whatsoever people or items are involved, we need to appreciate their contribution while creating our own work. An author gives us inspirations to generate new ideas. A peer provides feedback for us to contemplate on our own work. A public anonymous composition helps us understand a topic better.       The second is to be purposeful. With loads of information and high demands of outcomes, clarifying goals and aligning every activity and outcome with the goals help us stay on track. Being purposeful is prerequisite to be effective.        The last is to be adaptive. We adapt to norms of the network that we blend into. We are open to change the way we are doing something or adjust the outputs in accordance with a changing envir

   This week prompted me to a novel term "mashup",  a new creation made by assembling a group of previously unrelated items (Dennen). Mashup has become popular in arts where creative products are generated by blending elements from a range of sources. What about mashup of digital contents? According to SocialPilot, a  content mashup incorporates several media types from published sources to produce novel work that is typically published as a new post on  social media platforms . The availability and diversity of content sources enable digital creators to easily gain new inspirations; however, the mashup can become a mess, depending on how we organize and treat them.    Curation is an important networked knowledge activity to support the mashup of contents from various sources. As suggested by Dennen, r ather than gather every item that relates to a particular topic, curators make evaluative judgments about what they should include in their collections. Curation tools such a

     It is interesting for me to first time hear about "knowledge brokering", one of the six core networked knowledge activities, according to Dennen. It is common for me to share posts from other sources in social media.  It turns out that this action is brokering, not sharing. The nuance of these two activities is that the first is to share content of others while the latter is to share one's own content. The source of the shared content poses a concern of intellectual property and the permission to share.       I think that can be easily neglected in informal contexts of some social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok. The informality and fast pace of interactions in these channels tend to distract me from caring about every aspect of the shared information, including its owner's intellectual property right. When sharing a post publicly, I usually ask for permission to share. However, I may forget that when sending it privately to others. Or I don&

  The community observation assignment helps me identify some success factors of community building practice. My observation is about a LinkedIn group and a Facebook group of learning design experience. If you are interested in further details, please comment and I can share my observation paper. Integrity of purpose: a meaningful community needs to prioritize benefits for members, which will guide its content and activities. There are chances that some groups are founded and governed for commercial purposes, which is acceptable but should not become a dominant purpose of the group. Investment of content sharing: members should make insightful posts, thus ensuring high-quality content of the group. The post needs to open up for thoughtful discussions or exhibit insightful contents of the topic. Consistency of norm expressions: what the admin write should be what the written norms are demonstrated through posts and interactions in the group. Diversity of content and interactions: the gr

     The term "Privacy Solutions" has grabbed my attention this week. We have read and talked a lot about privacy concerns and issues. What about solutions? Our class's social media guideline provides some ideas, such as creating different profiles suited for the class's social media channels. Website's cookies give users choices to select only necessary data sharing. Apps run by iOS permit users not to allow cross-app tracking. The privacy solutions are either embedded in inherent webs or apps, or actively created by users.     I literally searched for the term "Privacy Solutions" in Google. The results interestingly showed all privacy solutions,  such as OneTrust or IBM, for organizations and enterprises. No services or products serve an individual produsage. I wonder if there is too little B2C (business to consumer) market demand to fulfill, or the solution is just missing for that niche. It can be promising for a third party to provide a privacy solu

       What digital footprints do you want to leave? It is a signature concern in the era of technologies and information: a digital legacy that identifies a person. That adds to the legacy list the past generations normally cared about, such as properties they owned, good offspring they raised and educated, or fame they carried. Our generation (digital native, digital immigrant, digital adapter, and so on) needs to be mindful of what we are like in social media, let alone our own information in other internet activities. Does it sound like our life becomes more and more complex by being more and more public?     It is complex though, but it must be helpful. Digital persona is used nowadays for various purposes, such as job recruitment, partnership verification, or dating exploration.  Besides one's physical interactions and appearances which can be limited or fabricated, we seek for additional online evidences to gain more confidence about someone or some affairs. Losing trust or

     It is interesting to find myself naturally changing the tone of voice in different channels. Observing how others communicate in each channel (making a new post, having a reply or reaction), I learn their norms to adapt myself. It is similar to how we adapt to various offline environments to express oneself and perceive others, whether it is a party, a job interview, or a casual neighbor discourse.     In LinkedIn, my writing sounds formal and professional. The tone of voice is quite similar as the one used in my Canvas discussions: respectful and formal. I rarely use emoji to express emotions. Abbreviations or slangs are also not used frequently. The content in LinkedIn is also profession related, conveying facts, updates, or lessons. In Facebook, I feel more freedom to express feelings through emojis, replies and words. Content also plays around emotions behind, ranging from personal stories to opinions. Even job-related content conveys emotions (pride, disappointment, etc.).   

       I curated a tool list from various sources that I find helpful for building one's online portfolio and network. Building presence for me is how we present ourselves with purposes and authenticity while making meaningful connections with others in related work or field.      Some p ortfolios or professional personal websites for references: http://theelearningcoach.com http://danielstanford.com/index.html http://www.jackievannice.com http://chriswgperez.com https://www.devlinpeck.com/projects/whats-a-vegan https://anaslearningcorner.com/portfolio/ https://kassiedesigns.webflow.io/projects/lab-project     Some free website builders: Wix Weebly Google Sites Adobe Portfolio (FREE with a Creative Cloud account)      Some social media sharing sites that are popular, established, and full-featured:  Merlot, a place to share and find open educational resources [ http://www.merlot.org ] SlideShare, One of the largest sites to find and share presentations and other professional cont

       Community of Practice (CoP) has captured my attention this week. Its applications are popular in various disciplines, as a means of   fostering both individual and group knowledge within a social learning system. According to Donald (2015), CoPs have three fundamental elements: a ‘domain’ of activity or knowledge that creates a sense of common identity, the ‘community’ who are the members who care about that domain, and the shared ‘practice’ developed by community.     I am particularly interested in guideline of building and sustaining a CoP, which is applicable for my future design work and enhancing efficiency of current learning groups that I am facilitating. My post includes some helpful frameworks that I detected in related research and handbooks of the topic.     This CoP Lifecycle is suggested by Adams et al. (2023) to guide the step-by-step design and facilitation of CoP with actionable strategies. Their guiding questions in each step are also thought-provoking in devi