First

朋友是可以一起打着伞在雨中漫步；是可以一起在海边沙滩上打个滚儿；是可以一起沉溺于某种音乐遐思；是可以一起徘徊于书海畅游；朋友是有悲伤我陪你一起掉眼泪，有欢乐我和你一起傻傻的笑……

朋友不一定常常联系，但也不会忘记，每次偶尔念起，还是感觉那么温暖、那么亲切、那么柔情；朋友是把关怀放在心里，把关注藏在眼底；朋友是相伴走过一段又 一段的人生，携手共度一个又一个黄昏；朋友是想起时平添喜悦，忆及时更多温柔。 朋友如醇酒，味浓而易醉；朋友如花香，淡雅且芬芳；朋友是秋天的雨，细腻又满怀诗意；
朋友是十二月的梅，纯洁又傲然挺立。朋友不是画，它比画更绚丽；朋友不是歌，它比歌更动听；朋友应是那意味深长的散文，写过昨天又期待未来。

朋友的美不在来日方长；朋友最真是瞬间永恒、相知刹那；朋友的可贵不是因为曾一同走过的岁月，朋友最难得是分别以后依然会时时想起，依然能记得：你，是我的朋友。

有朋友的日子里总是阳光灿烂，花朵鲜艳；有朋友的时候才发现自己已经拥有了一切。我们可以失去很多，但不能失去的是朋友。朋友也许并不能成为一段永恒，朋 友也许只是你生命中某段时间的一个过客，但因为这份缘起缘灭，更使生命变得美丽起来，朋友的情感更加生动和珍贵。即使没有将来又有何妨？至少，曾经我与你 一起走过朋友的路。

- 摘自“一个人的哲学”

I read across nearly everybody’s blog on the topic of “Blog” and produced this piece of synthesis, which hopefully will offer you a glimpse of my classmates’ experiences, insights and thinking about this particular technology.

I feel the obligation to delineate the collective ownership of this writing, as a composite of my classmates’ intellectual work. My job here is to string them together in a coherent fashion.

Culture is “ a system of pattern of ideas, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values, behaviors, habits, traditions, that characterize a social group and that affect on their life” (Gulfidan, 2004).

In order to understand a particular culture, the above quoted section needs to be learned about in the first place because it underlies and characterizes what this culture is.

Blog culture may not exist or even emerge on the surface until people start to play an active role in information posting, commenting, reading, linking, recommending and sharing, because it allows people to go into and live within this domain and establish their unique social norms, rules, beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and practices.

Below, I’m going to present several aspects of blog culture that were discovered by my classmates.

Structural Patterns

1. Posting comments, which serves as feedback to bloggers as well as stimulating lively discussions among bloggers and readers. Higher quality of the contributors tends to generate higher commenting sensation.
2. Hot links promote interaction and interconnectivity among blogger-blogger, bloggers-readers and readers-readers.
3. Reverse chronological order of postings allows people the convenience to see the most current post at first sight. A good observation made by Gulfidan about “chronological order” is that “for dairy type blogs…chronological order is a vital characteristic to follow blogger’s experiences in right order” and “also for blogs that informs users about the newest technological developments…. the sequence is important because it shows “progression of ideas”. She distinguished blogs that focus on “content rather than the sequence of ideas” and so time sequence may not appear as important or relevant..

Category

1. Journal style blog records blogger’s thoughts:

“something noticed on the way to work, notes about the weekend, a quick reflection on some subject or another. Links took the reader to the site of another bloggger with whom the first was having a public conversation or had met the previous evening, or to the site of a band he had seen the night before. Full-blown conversations were carried on between three or five blogs, each referencing the other in their agreement or rebuttal of the other’s position” (Blood, 2000)。

These blogs may be infused with various scenes of one’s daily life, ranging from intimate conversations with families and friends to photos of a trip to Europe and to ones’ contemplation over the meaning of life.

Taggart (2004), in talking about his impression about this dairy like blogs, said that they are not “replete with links or even comments to their posts. These postings are more contextual and insular. They seem to be written for an audience of perhaps a few if not one (the author). As a result, it is difficult for these bloggers to form large communities based upon common practices or ideas”.

2. Filter style blog “provides a valuable filtering function for their readers. The web has been, in effect, pre-surfed for them. Our of the myriad web pages slung through cyberspace, weblog editors pick out the most mind-boggling, the most stupid, the most compelling” (Blood, 2000).

Some of these bloggers were observed to be “comfortable with the technology and utilize the latest affordances. They are more likely to use the same technophilic jargon” (Taggart, 2004). He also noticed that these bloggers were eager to validate their posts by keeping their citations and references in accordance with APA style, so that “these blogs are more likely to be linked or referenced by a group blog”.

Mason (2004) found that filter-style blogs are characterized by their “cutting edge of news”. They “thwart the liberal media bias and strive to show off how much better they are than man stream media at promoting balanced news”.

Blogging motives

Jensen (2004) made a good comment that “blogs were influential in bringing to light the recent CBS forged documents scandal. Blogs are not news that corporation want to give us. It’s news that people themselves find interesting…. Corporations are run for profit, and must report the news accordingly”. Blogs are done for reasons other than money. The most common motive behind bloggers is sharing and expressing. Dehlin (2004) said

“To me, the miracle of the blogging movement lies within the notion of “aggregate and share”- the fact that really smart and motivated people are willing to spend time accumulating all of the most interesting and relevant articles/writings for a given topic/issue, and then are generous enough to share these findings with the rest of the world” (as cited in Jensen, 2004).

Jensen brought up a “value structure” that underlies people’s decision whether to give valuable information for free. Some people posted information on blogs because they were satisfied with the benefits others gain from this free information. This sense of fulfillment is what we call intangible value that may not be able to be measured by monetary value.

Education use of blog

Dawson (2004) affirmed the advantage of educational use of technology.

Wader (2004) likes the convenience of updating a class blog easily and fast. In fact, a class blog can be used as a bulletinboard, a discussion forum and a news group. He recommended students create their own blogs because “knowing how to blog and share work is a skill they could take in to the workplace or further their education”. To me, blogging cultivated a love for thinking, reflecting, and writing, which sharpens one’s observation and cognitive ability.

Below is a list of education use of blog, made by Anne Davis (October, 5, 2004).

For teachers, blog is where to:

• reflect on your teaching experiences.
• keep a log of teacher-training experiences.
• write a description of a specific teaching unit.
• describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn't work.
• provide some teaching tips for other teachers.
• write about something you learned from another teacher.
• explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes.
• share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom.
• provide some how-to's on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class.
• explore important teaching and learning issues.

For class, blog is where to:

• post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments and other pertinent class information.
• post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.
• communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students.
• post prompts for writing.
• provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games.
• provide online readings for your students to read and react to.
• gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them.
• post photos and comment on class activities.
• invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice.
• publish examples of good student writing done in class.
• show case student art, poetry, and creative stories.
• create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning.
• create a literature circle.
• create an online book club.
• make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills.
• ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions and written work.
• post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students.
• build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take.
• link your class with another class somewhere else in the world.

For students, blog is where to:

• learn how to blog
• complete class writing assignments.
• create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing.
• express their opinions on topics you are studying in class.
• write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest.
• discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them (You, the teacher, can learn a lot this way!).
• write about class topics, using newly-learned vocabulary words and idioms.
• showcase their best writing pieces.

And, list goes on and on.

While we are beaming over the fabulous tasks done by technology, we need to be cautioned against misuse of technology.

Educators should always retain an awareness that technology must converge with students’ interests. If not, regardless of its super power and multi-functions, technology is only in the way of the students’ progress.

Problems can emerge

When students are under the pressure of implementing a technological application without receiving scaffolding that leads to their understanding and experiencing its usefulness, the technology is in for loss of its purpose. For instance, Richardson suspected that “by its very nature, assigned blogging in schools cannot be blogging. It’s contrived”. He pointed out that students are blogging for the sole audience, the teacher, and when the course is over, they “drop blogging like wet cement” (as cited in Downes, 2004). In this case, students are not necessarily interested in using blog for learning probably because in the first place they haven’t been helped to develop this interest (Zhai, 2004).

Here is where teacher missed an important perspective: a new technological tool should converge with student interests. Technology is expected to be a facilitator rather than a burden for students learning.

Dewey (1897) thought teacher should observe students’ interest and provide materials that worked “readily and fruitfully” (p. 233). It is OK to introduce new educational technology to students but they need questions asked that will help them understand why they are doing what they are doing, they need guidance on how to use the technology, and they need to be convinced why they will gain benefit from using this technology. Teachers can not just thrust upon their students technologies, one piece after another, because soon, they will get fed up with so many weird stuff that doesn’t make sense at all.

It can be summarized that two major factors affect the effectiveness in the formation of the seemingly intelligent collective behavior: 1. the ability of capturing trace (or availability of trace); 2. The ability of adapt to trace. For example, in the flock simulation, the better vision the birds have, the faster the flock will be formed. In the ants’ simulation, the higher diffusion rate and lower evaporation rate mean the higher availability of the trace, and this in turn will cause faster formation of ant’s collective behavior. And in the flock simulation, the more capable a bird can make a turn, the faster the flock will form.

Ants





Flock

A most prominent difference I perceived between Lineage environment and a classroom situation is the role that guidance plays in learning.

First of all, I would like to propose that “learning didn’t simply happen, the students went through a process of building new knowledge by modifying their causal nets…. Students were consistently involved in the process of recognizing their knowledge in a way that incorporated new knowledge elements with established ones” (Shelton & hedley, 2003, p. 349).

The “guidance” refers to the foundation laid before new knowledge is introduced, a meaningful context for the new knowledge to make sense and a practical implication of the implication of the knowledge into the real world.

This framework can be illuminated by Merrill’s first principle. For instance, activation of prior experience fills the foundation. Effective demonstration and learners’ application of the new knowledge constitute a meaningful learning environment. Successful integration of new knowledge into learners’ world implies the practicability of learning.

Guidance takes place throughout the whole process of learning.

In a traditional classroom situation, guidance is often provided by the instructor, who conscientiously prepare his/her students for the upcoming input, exemplify concepts, carefully demonstrate the procedures and coach the students by seeing them through a variety of tasks where feedback and comment are directed for the purpose of their accomplishing the tasks. Guidance also happens after the new knowledge is conveyed, when students try to use it under new contexts that look different from the ones they were taught with. Advice sheds light on new angles through which the new knowledge is found applicable in the new contexts.

In Lineage, guidance is mainly offered in the form of pop-up dialogue that instructs you what to do for what purpose. Learners need to engage in an independent exploration in order to learn how to survive and eventually win. No overt teaching occurs. We learn the game through “full participation in genuine game play” our own and with “more knowledgeable/skilled others” (Steinkuehler, n.d.).

This learning pattern reminds me of the online self-organizing social systems, which features a high degree of management decentralization (Wiley & Edwards, 2002).

It also strikes a cord with Dewey’s proposition that in order for the students to progress along the trajectory of participation in a community, they should be granted the power to have their interests protected and nurtured (Dewey, 1897). Dewey believed that “interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power” and “constant and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the educator” (p. 233). Teacher is merely “a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences” (p. 231). Lineage encourages learners’ loyalty to their interest, by which I mean students learn what they are interested in, in ways that fit them best.

Some people argue that face-to-face interaction between an instructor and students works better than leaving the students self-exploring a land of wonder. But you do need a spirit of independent learning that helps you develop self-studying and meta-cognitive skills, which are necessary in our life learning adventure.

Then, here comes the debate over how much we should rely on the power of instructors. Birrell (n.d.) argued that “the knowledge of right and wrong comes best through transmission and not experimentation…. Besides, experience is sometimes costly”. He reminded us that how many times do we hear people say if they hadn’t experimented. He believed that “teachers should be the most thoughtful, educated, articulate, and broadly read of professionals, constantly challenging their professional assumptions and educational theories. In my previous post on my blog, I maintained that instructors are not perfect people and there is not a uniform standard measuring what is “perfect”. I go along based upon the belief that professors are OFTEN in a better position to decide for us the direction we should go for a particular course because their knowledge and experience can help us avoid slipping into the wrong path. It may not be true for everyone, but I agree that learning is incomplete through self-determining things individually through “experimental, experiential and naturalistic means” (Birrell, n.d.).

My character is named Wushu – knight, Mana point 1, Hit point 16, Armor class 10. At level 1, my character’s strength is 18, dexterity 13, constitution 15, wisdom 9, charisma 12. Yes, died frequently, but at decreasing number each time. Most embarrassing way to die is in the hands of those whose threat escaped my attention.

As was said one's identity – “in particular, claims of real-world expertise of history of accurate online contributions – plays an important role in judging the veracity of an article”.

Claim of a real identity holes one’s accountability of providing true, useful, relevant and responsible information that targets at the request or question from others. Establishing a clearly recognizable identity online is motivated by a desire to help and share. Another motivation for the sustainable enthusiasm of participants is the potential to build their reputation. A well-known reputation stimulates the writer to contribute “intelligent and interesting” postings, which in turn boosts his/her reputation.

People’s trusts grow based upon their knowledge of one’s reputation, motivation and beliefs. Our trust is more easily granted to those who enjoy a good reputation, a perceivable and sound motivation and a shared belief with us. We may hesitate I adapting one’s advice if this person’s motivation is questionable or has drastically different beliefs from us.

When one’s real identity is hidden, two cases deserve consideration. One is the deception for purposeful misleading. This case often takes place when one’s real identity is not qualified for his/her true persona. Another case is “subtle identity manipulations”, which is innocuous and doesn’t harm others.

A faked identity holds less accountability to tell the “truth” and serve the good for the community. It inflates the “freedom” to cheat and dally with people’s trust. Under no constraint of the accountability in contingent on one’s identity, some people derived joy from imposing wrong information on group members, offending them and seeing them being fooled around. Seldom is one an idiot by nature, and soon people will see through the fraud, which gives birth to feeling of hurt, insult and infuriation.

Almost for sure, the trust misplaced on these fake personas suffer tremendously. A more fatal impact is that people who were offended would warn other group members against such a stupidity. It was indicated in the article that “a known and notorious net personality hoping to appear online under a fresh name may have an easier time disguising his or her header ID than the identity revealed in the text”. Those who were determined to disrupt the online community should have expected this cost of their misdemeanor.

The second case of hidden identity involves using pseudonym to protect privacy. Reasons such as private information disclosure or asking “ignorant” questions made pseudonym a good choice. Sometimes, anonymity is used too. But,

Although purely anonymous individuals are capable of communicating with each other, there is no accretion of personal histories in their interactions: reputation of any kind is impossible in a purely anonymous environment. The motivation for many of the qualities we associate with community, from cooperative behavior to creative endeavor, depends on the existence of distinct and persistent personas.

I'm not sure how much people will rely on or trust an anonymous message even though it makes sense. The uncertainty seems what advice people to give a second thought.

Despite the legitimate reasons for hiding one’s identity, people may not be as sympaththetic to others as they expect others to be to themselves. An interesting phenomenon is people may not feel comfortable revealing their true identity while expecting others to be a single persona both online and offline so that they don’t have to take great trouble in wondering and suspicion.

Identity is such a subtle and tricky issue that it takes not only understanding of the online environment but also an understanding of human being to adjust our own level of trust in other people.

With the graphical user interface, you really don’t need to type in all the command. The application let you select a list of server and then channels in it.

The network connected are EFNet, IRCnet, 4-irc, Eu-irc, and Evolution. Some of the channels I connected to are #CasualChat, #Chat-World, #Beginner, #Cybar and #Chataway.

I perceived more similarity than differences between LambdaMOO and IRC. In IRC, people talked on specific topics on different channels. However, there didn’t seem to be a common interest in the channel. There wasn’t much interaction either. I said “hello”, nobody responded, probably due to my identify as a newcomer.

In IRC, there is not much information already existing in the IRC system. The only information you can get is from other users. In LambdaMOO, there are already lots of information in the system, so that you get lots of information merely out of the system without interacting with other people, or you can just wandering from room to room, or play games created by other people. IRC seems more like a chatting room while LambdaMOO provides more functionality, such as creating room, creating artifacts, playing and chatting etc.

I was also a bit surprised that the guy I was talking with immediately revealed his identity and location. I don’t know why I believed him although there’s no way I can verify his statement. Probably from the way and the tone he talked, I developed an intuitive sense of belief in him. On LambdaMOO, I had similar sense of mutual trust with whom I was talking with. Most of the time, I asked for help and I was always helped by either one person for a while or some others who were interested in coming to the rescue. This genuine gesture of helping and cooperating automatically instilled me with warmth and gratitude for the information provided by these kind people. I’m wondering if trust can be developed that easily in other communities. How shall a community be built in a way to promote the establishment of trust among community member?

In LambadaMOO, there was an occasion of off-topic. For instance, I said “I’m bored”. Then, a guy suggested we play word game. So, we started Scrabble! In IRC, I didn’t perceive the distinction between on-topic and off-topic.

LambdaMOO requires redundant command while IRC requires less, though still inconvenient and less appealing.