Technology & Social Media (Special Issue, Part 2)

Jun 022010
 

Last December, I announced my contribution to Part I of the Technology & Social Media (Special Issue) of in education journal. I am now pleased to announce that Part II of this Special Issue is now available, featuring nine academic articles and an edited book review. Acknowledgments are made in the Editorial, but I do want to thank, once again, all of those individuals (e.g., editors, reviewers, authors, readers) who helped make this issue a success.

Technology & Social Media (Special Issue, Part 2), 2010, 16(1)

Enjoy.

Tweet & A Poke: Camosun Keynote

May 022009
 

I was fortunate and honoured to have given the keynote address at Camosun College’s 2009 Walls Optional conference in Victoria, BC. The presentation provided a brief overview of the changing nature of knowledge, the rise of social networks, and the impact of emerging technologies/media on teaching & learning. Below, i have included the recorded video feed, the slide deck via Slideshare, and a link to the original Keynote file. Note that the Keynote file is very large (over 300MB) as it includes video files. Also, this file includes my speaker notes which were written as personal prompts and not as the actual, given dialogue.

Full video of the presentation is available here.

Slide deck (via SlideShare).

A Tweet and a Poke: How Educators Harness the Power of Social Networks
View more presentations from courosa.

Full presentation available here in Keynote.app format.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the presentation, or any of the content discussed. And thanks to the good people at Camosun College, the individuals I met at the #VictoriaTweetup the night before, and those that drove in from outside of Victoria for the event. It was a pleasure to meet you all!

Update: A Blip.tv version of the video is now available.

Danah Boyd on Social Networks

Feb 172008
 

Discover Magazine recently interviewed Danah Boyd, a well known PhD candidate who has been studying social networks. The interview is described as “a look at how kids use technology, where mobile phones are going, and the Facebook vs. Myspace smackdown.” Click the photo to watch the interview.

Danah Boyd on Social Networks

For many, there will not be much new information on social networks here. However, for those who have missed the piece on the beginnings of formalized social network services and how kids are connecting online, there are some interesting points made here.

How To Opt Out Of Facebook Beacon

Dec 082007
 

In case you’ve been sleeping, and don’t know what Facebook Beacon is:

Beacon is a part of Facebook’s Ads system that sends data from external websites to Facebook, ostensibly for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements, and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. Beacon was launched on November 6, 2007 with forty-four partner websites.

Here’s a very short Jingcast of how Facebook may let you opt out of this service.

Note: “It is as yet unclear whether or not opting out of the Beacon program stops third party websites from collecting information from Facebook entirely.” (Source)

MySpace & Google Form Partnernship

Nov 012007
 

Further to the OpenSocial announcement I mentioned yesterday, it seems that Google and Myspace have formed a partnership through this venture.

Although Microsoft Corp. beat Google in the bidding for a minority stake in MySpace rival Facebook, Google “may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle,” blogged Michael Arrington, who operates the technology blog TechCrunch. Microsoft announced last week that it was investing $240 million in Facebook as part of a strategic alliance.

Maybe I’m a conspiracy theorist, but it seems a bit unlikely that Google “may have just come out of nowhere”. Perhaps Google got M$ to overbid a Facebook partnership, expected the result and had this deal in the back pocket all along. Hmmmmm. No matter how you look at it, it’s just another reason not to mess with Google.

Open Social: Social Applications Across Platforms

Oct 312007
 

Open Social is launching tomorrow, and it’s being announced all over the web and via twitter.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

    “Containers” — social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and…
    “Apps” — applications that want to be embedded within containers — for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

Open Social is very similar to the Facebook Platform announced a few months back, however, Open Social is a standard that can work across all adopting services.

My favorite part:

Open Social — by making this exact same kind of opportunity available to any other social network or container and every app developer and site on the web, in an open and compatible way — will prevent Facebook from having any kind of long-term proprietary developer lock-in. Developers will easily write to both Facebook and Open Social, and have every reason to do so — in fact, 100+ million reasons to do so.

When proprietary standards are threatened, I am a very happy guy.

Reference.