First

朋友

2005-07-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

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”

Final Synthesis

2004-12-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

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

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.
Hot links promote interaction and interconnectivity among blogger-blogger, bloggers-readers and readers-readers.
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

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”.

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.

Self-organization

2004-12-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

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

MOO2

2004-11-29T07:31:00.000-08:00

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.).

MMO

2004-11-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Identity, Deception, Accountability

2004-11-15T06:51:00.000-08:00

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.

IRC

2004-11-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

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.

MUDs

2004-10-31T23:09:00.000-08:00

The social interaction pattern in MUD/MOO is basically synchronous many-to-many interaction.
It is synchronous is because after user log on with telnet, the connection is set up and maintained throughout the whole session. The user can either interact with other online users or with the system itself. The user can then decide what to do next, based on the immediate feedback from other users or from the prompt from the system. Comparing with blog and newsgroup we have studied, these two systems are generally asynchronous, because you can just post a new blog or piece of news without having any user reading them simultaneously.
It is many-to-many because MUD/MOO provides a virtual community in which multiple uses can join. And given the privilege, a user can create “room” and define behavior of this room, so that any user entering the room must behave properly with the given logics. Considering blog and newsgroup, the interaction pattern is generally one-to-many: in blog, one user posts a new blog, zero to many users can read it afterwards; or in news group, one user start a new topic, zero to many users can reply or continue on the same topic.
Given the privilege, a user is able to create “room” in MOO. To do so, the creator should first create artifacts in the room, and then define behaviors in the room and the logics behind these behaviors. The behaviors are usually defined by simple verbs and are given to users as commands. Users can then enter the room, take actions following the commands defined by the room, thus changing some of the original attributes of the room as well as themselves. So the artifacts created in the room do not affect user interaction directly by itself. Instead, the behaviors and the logics of the behaviors play an important role in mediating the interactions of the room, because the behaviors define what a user can do, and the logics of behaviors define the consequence of behaviors as state change on both the artifacts and users in the room.Speech modality is the primary means of communication in MUD/MOO. And in traditional MUD/MOO, all communication is done in textual format. It can be used to describe the virtual environments, depict the scenarios of the fiction and announce regulatory contents of the system. Users chat with each other in real time, and express emotion in textual format. Users use text to give commands to the system and the system give the users feed back instantly of the command

Reputation system

2004-10-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

One form that online market promotes cooperation is reputation system, the feedback forum, where the buyers and sellers have an opportunity to leave a comment and rate the transaction in terms of quality of the products, delivery speed etc.

Reputation system motivates sellers to maintain and improve their good records, which lays foundation for future sale. On the buyers’ side, seller’s reputation helps them decide how much trust to put on the seller and whether they want to do the deal with him/her. In this sense, seller’s good reputation serves as an incentive for buyers to purchase goods even at a higher price due to the trust placed on the seller.

Cooperation can be between buyers and buyers, sellers and sellers and buyers and sellers, in the form of buyers leaving comments, rating the exchange, regular sellers establishing personal web site for free advice and tips, experienced sellers consulting for new traders, or formation of groups of traders in a particular category area interacting, discussing and warning each other against counterfeit goods or suspicious behaviors (kollock, 1999).

Various forms of cooperation provide multiple sources of information that enable buyers to triangulate, verity and confirm the truthfulness of what was told. It’s risky to rel on a single source of information. A seller’s self-disclosure of past accomplishment doesn’t speak as loud as a shared comment from buyers. Advice from a single person may be limited to time and circumstances. If similar advice comes from several people, it would provide a more concrete evidence of its reliability. The feedback forum is not solely dependable either. Like Resnick, Zeckhauser, Friedman, and Kuwabara noted, people may not leave a feedback, may not leave a negative feedback in fear of “retallatory negative feedback or simply to avoid further unpleasant interactions”. Or a group of people could collaboratively inflate each other’s reputation. On the other extreme, people may try to undermine one’s reputation by falsely reporting negative opinion.

In this sense, a cooperation as unhealthy as such only contributes chaos in online market and discourages buyers from trusting the reputation system, which eventually drive new buyers away because seldom are people willing to risk losing their money.

Similar phenomenon is present offline. We learn trust a person from past and current association with him/her. However, our past association may have never encountered an occasion challenging enough to reveal this person’s true character. Length of time of “togetherness” doesn’t necessarily tell how well we know a person. In addition, how do we know what we hear from one, two or three people is objective? Human beings are value-laden. No right and wrong, it’s just people tend to base their judgment upon their values. What A thinks “bad” may be “good” for B. What C sees as “lousy” might be unbelievably appreciated by D. Different personal experiences could construct different meanings for a same reality, such as a person, an object or an event.

However, I’m not indicating the uselessness of personal opinions. It’s wise that we perceive these advice, opinions and tips constructively and couple them with our own experiences and finally generate our view of reality that works for ourselves.

In offline setting, reputation often unfortunately tunes into prejudice, which disguises a person’s true self. A pre-knowledge about a person or event is liable to disguise the true “inside” and slant our impressions that could have been otherwise the opposite. One’s good reputation tends to relax our vigilance against his/her nature while distorted rumor could disable our capacity to view people based on fairness and justice.

Fanfiction

2004-10-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2038309/1/ Shrek 3 – My Big Fat Ogre Family by starrdarcy
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2066394/1/ Titanic- the journey of one by Annie Blair
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2007062/1/ A love that never fades by DawsonGurl
My URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2099313/1/
Fanfiction is a way of helping students develop and improve their literacy skills based upon a sociocultural approach. It is popular because:
1. It is fun. Students can draw on sources from existing media and produce a “remix” as far as their originality and imagination support. This creative process endows learners a sense of ownership and self-recognition. It may even uncover their potential talent in writing. We don’t know if we can until we have tried. Who knows if one day a weird looking boy who used to play truant will distinguish himself for his best sell of the year?
2. (In the case of Cardcaptor.com) Fanfiction is not only a land of freedom for influent writers, but it also attracts “technology-savvy members” by allowing them to exhibit “the interactive site or message boards” that they created, which reveals their “artistic, music or Web abilities”. Fanfiction present itself as an advocate for multi-dimentional competency. Therefore, there is no reason for anybody to feel superior to others because of jis/her better English because other learners must be better in one way or another.
3. Fanfiction promotes association. If educators are to prepare students to participate in the real world and interact with real world people, in an attempt to solve real world problem, this perspective is “reinfied” in fanfiction community. Through commenting on “plot, characterization, grammar, or spelling”, learners are engaging in a meaning exchanging and sharing process, which contributes the advancement of the community as a whole. I think peer review is particularly important in cultivating the students with the spirit of contributing the community because the growth of a community depends on the collaborative efforts from all its members. If no one cares, the community will regress and eventually die down.

I believe learning is driven by intrinsic desire, not by “force”. Fanfiction works because they caught students’ interest. To say so, I am not indicating fanfiction works for everyone. It only works for those who are genuinely enthusiastic and excited about writing on fanfiction.
Despite all the attractive functions fanfiction enables learners to perform, it risks passing as a fad. In order to make fanfiction a long-term technological tool that supplement formal instruction, educators or researchers need to first let the students experience the its amazingness. Then, let them see the relevance of this technological tool to their individual goal in both career and life. Students have to be convinced of the value of it so as to take the initiative to learn and use it.
Fanfiction was probably seen of no value to some learners at first, but it may grow on them, which partially rests on teachers. The teacher can’t “push” students to use what he/she thinks useful. Interests rest within the learners. Teacher is to “select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding o these influences” (Dewey, 1897). To a certain extent, a teacher has the power to orient or prevent a child into or from becoming interested in a subject area.
Technology, when combined with human elements, will achieve its effectiveness and efficiency in formal instructional setting.

Blogs, Part the Second

2004-10-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

Ray Schroeder

http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/onlinelearning/blogger.html

Pam Pritchard

http://www.edublognews.com/

Maish R Nichani

http://www.elearningpost.com/

Brian Lamb

http://www.reusability.org/blogs/brian/

Joe Hart

http://radio.weblogs.com/0114870/

Anne Davis

http://anvil.gsu.edu/EduBlogInsights/

Bill Brandon

http://radio.weblogs.com/0110222/categories/eLearning/

Topics interested me:

Below, I’m presenting several topics that I read closely. I’ll embed my thoughts and reflection over these topics, which shows how they threw light on my current understanding of these issues and how some of them imply to my future career.

Teacher evaluation can’t be based totally on test scores. Exclusive attention on test scores often led to stress on good teachers, student getting tired of tests and losing interest in what they are doing, “schools being pitted one against another”, and “rampant prepping, cramming, teaching for tests” (Davis, 2004).

Behaviorism emphasized knowledge within learners should be observable in order to demonstrate what learners are able to do. Piaget’s developmental theory treats knowledge acquisition a cognitive development, “the transformation of the child’s undifferentiated, unspecialized cognitive abilities into the adult’s conceptual competence and problem-solving skill.” This process of transformation is gradual and continuous, rather than being immediately ready to be observed. In this sense, what learners are able to do is not necessarily an accurate reflection of their knowledge. One example would be when learners are able to perform a task in one situation but not another.

Blogging voices needed talks about a shutdown of a teacher’s class weblog because of the violation of an outdated telecommunication policy that bans student message. A dilemma showed up when this teacher was looking for research that supports use of weblogs for instruction because hardly much research of this type was available. It exposed a gap between literature and practice in education use of weblog. A need for data and ideas is present.
Next two topics offer a glimpse of the direction that language teachers could follow. One is about using LiveJournal for authentic communication in EFL class. I was aware of the difficulties EFL students have in studying a foreign language in their homeland. But I hadn’t had personal experience of designing and implementing Internet communication activities in my class. With the good intent of using weblogs in EFL classroom, a new problem emerged, “lack of participation from readers outside the classroom” (Campbell, 2003). LiveJournal was able to address this difficulty. The author’s step-by-step guidelines for incorporating weblogs in his classroom are of great value for young and inexperienced language teachers who plan to start using weblogs for language teaching.
Y5R is an ESL classblog set up by Jason Reagin, an American teacher teaching English in China. He adapted weblog in English Language Teaching. I’m curious to learn how weblog could effectively enhance English learning in China, which is relevant to my professional career. His experience has proved to be a success so far, indicating promising prospect of weblog use with Chinese students. I can draw on these two teachers’ experience for my teaching in the future.

Using weblog in class is only partial of the success. Evaluating classroom blogs would provide more convincing evidence for its success. I read about some guidelines for weblog evaluation in educational setting. As I’m taking INST 7150 now, it offers me the convenience of comparing our evaluation standard with that in another setting. In addition, if I want to apply weblog for my future teaching, it’ll be very beneficial to learn about the weblog evaluation strategies so that I can maximize its effectiveness for students.

The edublog list is like a huge information network, linking to an enormous sea of links and information. The above are some core topics that tens of articles centered around. I read most about weblog use for education, which made me to start thinking what makes technology use in education meaningful and meaningless.

What makes technology meaningless?

When students are under the pressure to implement a technological application without receiving scaffolding that leads to their understanding and experiencing its usefulness, the technology seems to lose its purpose.

One example concerning this perplexity is weblog use in education. Long claimed that using blogging software is not blogging. 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).

Campbell (2003) said that “Homework assignments were not only designed to encourage students to put to use what they are learning in class, but also to instill positive and responsible blogging behaviors…”

Students need to be educated that blogging is about reading what interest them. More importantly, students need to be cultivated with the spirit of “meaningfully engaging in a community”, “engaging witht eh content and with the authors of what you’re read” (Downes, 2004).

Richchdson defined blogging as a genre of writing that may “have great vale in terms of developing critical thinking skills and information literacy” (as cited in Downes, 2004).

Instead of writing for the purpose of satisfying the teacher, students need to gradually develop a desire to write and think, reflect on what they are writing, “engage readers and audience in a sustained conversation that then leads to further writing and thinking” over the sustained period of time.

Students expressed their wish to be “guided and nursed by tteachers that will ask you questions that make you think” (as cited in Davis, 2004). They stated that

“New writers need questions asked that will help them understand why they are writing and will guide their purpose to have greater clarity for them and others. Teachers need to be taught to help their students find a purpose, not give them hours and hours to find their own. They need guidance, not time. They need to feel a teacher’s excitement for writing…” (as cited in Davis, 2004).

Teacher’s comment, peer response and reactions from other readers will form a new realm of blogging, a new realm of human connection (Downes, 2004).

Dr. Wiley often gives his students a few question for thinking so that they have a focus in their reading and writing. It prevents the new bloggers from staring at the ceiling, wondering what to write. It may not be possible that ever student in 7150 falls in love with blogging at the outset. But, a guided writing may eventually evolve into a constantly spontaneous self-expression. So teacher’s navigation ushers the students into the miracle of blogging world.

Technology became a problem in e-learning.

Professor maragliano (2004) in an interview stated that “often on-line courses are not good, and are merely the mechanical transposition on-line of resources designed for other media… Many (on the delivery side) think that the Net is nothing more than a convenient and low-cost solution for producing and distributing learning material and (on the recipient side) a fantastic opportunity to receive texts, pictures and sounds directly on to one’s desktop.

He also concerned about “a risk of the learning side being overshadowed by technology”. He questioned the plausibility of net placing “the universe of knowledge at everyone’s disposal by making available an infinite variety of building blocks to be assembled at will”. He argued that technical solution has to be based on the “pedagogical yardstick” in order to make sense of what the Net provides.

Simply presenting and distributing information without considering pedagogical goal and strategies is not likely to “teach”.

Gamble-Risley (2004) “never believed that computers were the panacea to solve the student achievement problems”. She claimed that technology was “never in the position to usurp the value of the teacher and his or her comment to teaching” nor did it “take the place of teaching students the basic”.

However, these drawbacks of the current use of technology in education are not intended to deny the great accomplishment technology help people achieve.

Intel CEO Craig Barrett applauded today’s technology for being “a powerful set of tools to make changes happen” in classrooms, for providing “instance access to massive amounts of information”, for engaging “students in hands-on, active, inquiring-based learning” and “building collaboration and expanding communities of learners”.

He acknowledged teachers’ importance as “‘spark of transformation’ to unlock students’ abilities”.

He also proposed that teachers and technology workforce “share the same need for sustained professional development.” Teachers need effective technological tools to “expand and adapt the skills in the classroom”.

Technology is great at empowering teachers with “innovation, collaboration and replication”, the key strategies that enable teachers to “feed their stduets passion for learning…”.

3.
Acording to Bush (1983), "technologies themselves and the vision of an electronic community are largely the products and dreams of privileged White men" (as cited in Damarin, 1998). In addition, "many aspects of these applications are guided by metaphors drawn from places and activities that are traditionally the domais of privileged White men". If technology are to reflect socially and culturally-based assumpltions of its developers, memebers that are underrepresented in the society are the ones that suffer. Some educators feel technology is so "thoroughly saturated with cultural biases that it must be changed..." (Damarin, 1998).
4.
For non-affluent schools, access to technology shouldn't be provided at the cost of termination of school breadkfst or lunch programs, or support for poor students (Damarin, 1998). The tradeoff between technology and bsice needs presents a dilemma.

Technology, if harnessed constructively and appropriately, will supplement and enhance teaching and learning by providing convenience, efficiency and originality. However, “How"” is a question deserving serious consideration.

Total hours: 15 hours

Hours report

2004-10-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

7.5 hours: reading blogs, comparing, contrasting. 7 .5 hours really doesn't allow me to read through each blog closely. I would like to follow though Megnut, my favorite one!

Blog Hopping

2004-10-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

Responding to Dr. Wiley’s question “What is the distinctive culture among bloggers from other cultures you know of”, I’m comparing blog communication with face-to-face communication.

First, “culture is the sum of a social group’s observable patterns of behavior, customs, and way of life.” It comprises the ideas, beliefs, and knowledge that characterize a particular group of people (Harris, 1986).

The five blogs I visited are listed below:

http://megnut.com: Meg Hourihan’s personal blog

http://collectdolls.about.com/: Denise Van Patten’s personal blog

http://www.freakinjen.us/weblog.php: Jen’s personal blog

http://www.lessig.org/blog/: Lawrence Lessig blog

http://jakegordon.blogspot.com/: Jake Gordon’s blog

Meg and Denise

I particularly like the first two blogs that belong to Meg and Denise. Meg’s blog belongs to current blog genre, and Denise’s is more like an original type of blog.

Meg’s blog looks simple, clean, embellished with only black, white and green. The major component of her blog is personal journal style narratives, in the form of fun things done during the weekend, daily activities that had special meaning, answers to readers’ questions, personal observations of life that reveal her exquisite heart to subtlety, quick reflections or thoughts about articles from New York magazine, and commentary of issues that may easily escape other’s attention.

Lack of fancy underscores the fullness of the content in her blog. She is articulate in presenting in front of your eyes vivid scenes of different aspects of her life, just like a TV biographical documentary recording her growth, her turning points in life, her current passion for cooking, her emotional ups and downs, her career, her boyfriend, her marathon, all of which, hardly with any delay, convinces you that Meg is such a person that seldom one would not like her. You feel you are already a friend of hers, which motivates you to send her an email without the hesitation you often have when you first write to someone you’ve never met.

Her accounts are often embedded with words and expressions that require background information and familiarity with where she lives and what she does. As a new reader of Meg’s blog, I am not following very well every single sentence in her posts. As I go back to her archives and read more and learn more about Meg, I hope I will be able to better understand her talk. In addition, I am impressed with the ease and deftness with which Meg played with words that were small but transferred something farther and deeper. Her sentences demonstrate a fabulous fluency and smoothness, which made it so easy for the reader to get immersed into her world.

Meg also provides useful links to many articles she favors. I even feel if you just read all her recommended articles, you would become pretty well-informed of the world!

Many of Meg’s posts are permeated with big city flavor. But, for a reader in a small town, Meg’s life is really not that distant or intimidating, probably because she caught and shared the most essence part of life that is really not very much dependent on geographic locations or economic conditions. You don’t have to live in New York to be able to experience Meg’s joy, wonder, frustration…

Is it true that people of same mind fall together? Other bloggers of Meg’s site talked in a similar fashion as her, natural, comfortable, down-to-earth, no trace of pretence or overdoing.

Denise is a store owner selling dolls. A major theme in her blog is the promotion of dolls for the upcoming season, as well as the upcoming doll shows. Unlike Meg who hospitably invites you to go into all dimensions of her life, Denise centered her blog mainly with all kinds of news and information about dolls, such as the arrival of Halloween dolls, the newly established partnership between Hilary Duff and Barbie Doll, new lines for doll designs, doll furniture for display, and reflection of the growth of doll industry. Her brief introduction and comment on a topic are often accompanied with a link to an article or another site that contextulizes the topic. She also displayed many links on the left and right columns that lead to most popular, hot issues about the doll world.

As a doll store owner, Denise is probably not only motivated to promote her products, but she also possesses the anxiety to cultivate readers with interesting background information about dolls. For instance, the right column of her blog contained links to informative articles that introduces the history of dolls, pictures of the dolls’ facial expressions, hair color and style, and outfits, the meaning represented by different dolls, social implications these dolls have, ways of doll collection etc.

To Denise, making money is not what this blog is solely for. She wants her readers to understand the world of dolls because there’s so much to be learnt beyond appreciation of these exquisite faces and figures. Dolls are for decoration, but they can also symbolize important events in history. People made dolls probably to remember something of special significance.

The reason I detailed on these two blogs is that they are representative of the rest of the blogs I visited. Jen’s and Jake’s blogs are pretty much Meg’s style. If any difference, Jake’s blog is embedded with images and videos, a bit like what Jill called photoblogs and videoblogs. These visual images performed an excellent task of bringing readers to Jake’s life. Lessig blog is more typical of the original “filtered” weblog, link-driven that keep readers staying current in his field of interest. Each entry is a short piece of narrative, which is often illuminated by the links that lead to an article.

To sum, the original and current blog differ mostly in the content and way to convey information. But I see the same passion for both types of bloggers to share with readers their thoughts, reflections and perspectives. To them, blogs is a place of self-expression and public resource repository.

Blog communication is different than face-to-face communication in several ways.

Blog posts can be over 5 years span or longer. Readers are at the liberty of searching through archive and pick up what interest them to read, which allows them to know better this particular blogger, such as his/her hobbies, field of study, life style, political stand etc.

Face-to-face communication won’t offer so much personal or historical information about a person. A conversation often centers around a specific theme. For instance, you talk with a doctor about the symptom you are experiencing, consult with your professor about your dissertation proposal, confide in your parents your plan for the future, or chat with your friends about a movie.

Even in the case of a causal talk where you may randomly bring up one topic or another, with no focus, you still do not enumerate a list of everything from 1995 to 2002.

Blog posts are just there. They are not running away or stolen. You may take a glance at your convenience.

Face-to-face communication doesn’t endow one the privilege of looking back and reviewing unless notes are taken or other kinds of recording equipment are employed. A conversation can easily surpass the memory capacity of human being.

Blog is a record of thought: “something noticed on the way to work, notes about eh weekend, a quick reflection on some subjects or another” (Rebecca, Blood). Bloggers generally write down anything they think worth of noting and sharing. They don’t write to satisfy a particular group of readers because how would they know who will be their readers as well as what would the readers’ interests. Readers come and go at will, no pressure upon them to go to a specific blog.

Face-to-face communication often takes into account a common interest and need of the participants. People don’t come together at a designated time to talk about nothing or everything. They don’t have time for irrelevant diversion either. You talk what you are supposed to and come right to the point. In this situation, less freedom is granted for what to say.

Blog is mostly a texual body. Readers can neither observe the author’s facial expression nor hear their tone such as sarcasm (but maybe you still can from reading through lines). Face-to-face communication unravels the secret in the speaker’s mind through his/her eyes. Raising eye browns, curling lips, smiling or shrugging shoulders all supplement the interpretation of what’s being talked.
Language can be used differently. Without knowing who are the potential readers, bloggers write in their own style. However, when it comes to face-to-face communication, speakers often consider who is being spoken with and so adjust way of speaking accordingly. For instance, we don’t talk with our neighbor’s teenage boys the same way as when we talk with the president of USU. But it’s out of control on a blog because you don’t know who will read it and when.
Blogs can be anonymous (eg. fake name) while face-to-face communication doesn’t conceal one’s identity. The dynamic, content and way of conversing may differ significantly under these two circumstances.

Hours report

2004-09-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

I spent a total 8 hours searching google discussion groups, participating in discussions, and examining interaction patterns of some threads that interested me. I must confess that my eyeballs nearly dropped at the end of today because they'd been glued on the computer screen so long... They are protesting for a better treatment...

Some facts I found...

2004-09-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

Searching through Humanities.language.Sanskrit, I noticed the threads here are often short, containing one article or two. Among the most recent 100 thread topics, threads containing only one article accounts for 60%. Threads containing two, three, four, five, six, nine, eleven, fourteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen articles altogether constitutes 40%, with two-article-threads making 13% of the total, three-article-threads 11%, four-article-threads 3%, five-article-threads 5%, six-article-threads 2%, and threads with nine, eleven, fourteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen articles making 1% on their own.

I scrutinized the threads characterized with only one article. Information contained mainly includes: asking for opinions about a particular website, recommendation for study abroad accompanied with a website, asking for translation from one language into other languages, calling for help for various purposes, invitation for internet based essay competition, shocking truth about God, introducing websites that enable you to become rich, offer jobs in a certain field,

What do these one-article-threads tell us? To me, they are contextualizing a problem called “Free-ride” (Kollock & Smith, 1996).

Misuse of bandwidth: One thread topic about cyberspace essay competition, though phrased differently, were posted twice in the same group. Threads that posted long list of unrecognizable codes are also examples of violation of bandwidth use.
Free-ride the goal of the discussion: A topic on whether a primordial flood did happen and whether it was caused by fossils seemed irrelevant to the general goal of this particular group.
Free-ride group norm: One post was all written in CAPITAL letters, which is against the group norm because it seems to send a hostile message that other participants are NOT welcome to read it.

Language such as “He didn’t know what he’s doing” is an inappropriate verbal usage in group discussion because it may hurt people’s feeling. Everyone is equal, and there shouldn’t be judgment against anybody.

Usenet postings are efficient in disseminating news, raising people’s consciousness to social concerns and addressing personal questions. However, if used inappropriately, Usenet will lose these functions and become a playground of those who manipulate it with no sense of conscientiousness.

Observed here is a conflict between individual and collective benefit in use of public goods, which in this case refers to the google group discussion space. This cyperspace was created with the intent to bring people of common interest together. The increasing size of participants necessitates an orderly process of interaction, which is founded upon collaboration among group participants.

The free-ride phenomenon mentioned above revealed a lack of cooperation among some of the group members. These people took the advantage of this common ground without contributing the maintenance of the conversation.

No response is probably a sanction given by other participants. As mentioned in Kollock and Smith (1996), “sanctioning participant’s behavior in the Usenet is more of a challenge”. Ignoring the inappropriate behaviors doesn’t guarantee its extinction. Some kind of institution is needed to regulate and manage online community.

Thread Mini-analysis

2004-09-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

Checking my own posts

Before I start analyzing other threads, I am curious to take a look at the two places where I started a thread, and the other one place I participated in a thread discussion. Learning from my own experience is always a good start for me.

I posted a question about the historical development of Biography as a qualitative study tradition at Sci.research on September 20, but got no answer or suggestion until this morning. Is my question too difficult for people to know about? Are people not motivated to search information for my question because (I guess) they are not paid, they are busy, they are not interested in my question that are irrelevant to their life? With no strong anticipation to hear from anybody, I was not particularly disappointed because I had no attempt to rely on this place for the answers to my questions, though I’d love to see some replies.

Then, I went back to humanities.language.sanskrit where, in one thread, I posted my advice for a Taiwan student on how to improve English in one thread and in another, my perspective on the differences between children and adults in learning a 2^nd language. The former thread stopped from my post last week probably because people who encountered this thread later either agreed with the advice or couldn’t think of anything new to offer.

Almost sure of the result for my second thread, it was a pleasant surprise that one of my posts received someone’s attention! The response conveyed some good points. However, it contained quite a few abbreviations, with which I’m not familiar, I would need to ask for further explanations. Besides, I have some different opinions than what was stated in this response, so I would follow up the message, which hopefully would elicit more feedbacks from a larger circle of participants. It never hurts to be exposed to a variety of viewpoints because it is throughout the course of participation, discussion, exploration that we gain deeper understanding of the question.

I will plan on watching how my thread is going to develop. It may expand or just halt.

Thread analysis

URL ：

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=pan.2004.09.22.14.09.17.436869%40attglobal.net&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26group%3Dtalk.environment%26start%3D25

I ran into a thread where Cindy requested for recommendations for places in Southern CA and San Diego, where she’s planning a winter trip. She’s only been in U.S. for one year, so she’d like to search more before going on the trip.

What I observed that motivated people to respond:

Make negative suggestion: South CA and San Diego are not worth Cindy’s time. Recommended Cindy a beach, which is representative of South CA and San Diego.
Disagree with the previous post. For instance, one person thought going to Newport beach is unwise because it’s cold, especially in winter.
Cindy thanked all the responses and continued to ask about San Diego.
Correct a mistakenly phrased sentence that may raise misunderstanding. For instance, two people simultaneously pointed out that Disney World is in Florida, nowhere near LA.
Defend for the “mistake”: One participant thought Ian meant “Disney land” instead of “Disney World”, taking it as a typo, and didn’t think it deserve a debate.

At this point, it’s a little bit off-topic. It’s Ok you correct what you think is wrong. But, the focus is to help Cindy find some nice places to tour, rather than spending pages on fighting over “Disney Land” and “Disney World”.

Make judgment against Ian, the person who said Disney World is near LA.
Offer positive suggestions where to go in LA and San Diego. It’s the first time Cindy was provided with what she actually wanted. Dick not only recommended places to visit in LA and San Diego respectively, but he also based his suggestion on times of the year and Cindy’s interest. For instance, he asked if Cindy likes Arts and advised Cindy not to miss the Rose Bowl Parade if she happened to be in CA in New Years time. What’s better is that Dick opened his statement by a sound clarification “Disneyland is in California. Disney World is in Florida”, no judgment, and that’s all.
Another off-topic discussion: GP wondered how come Cindy speaks English and got in America.
Restate the question to get back to topic. Cindy confessed her assignment from 7150. She made an effort to get the discussion back to her question.
Another positive suggestion: Brenda gave the best answer so far, with great details and directions for driving. Her description brought Southern CA and San Diego to life. Her fluent writing filled us with smell, breeze, sunshine and friendly smile.
A third off-topic: Icono grabbed Brenda’s statement “I refuse to drive in Italy or Brazil” by giving a website why he/she enjoyed doing so.
Etiquette issue: Julie asked Cindy if she was taught to cross post in newsgroup, which is against etiquette.
A third positive suggestion: Florian gave more information about transportation for touring in these two places, along with two useful links.
A fourth positive recommendation: A forest sculptor shared his unique finding of natural beauty in LA and San Diego, which often escaped most people’s eyes.

Summary

The above list chronologically recorded the interaction pattern of this discussion thread. Motivations that stimulated people react and carry on the conversation can be categorized into seven groups.

Group 1: Positive suggestions that answer exactly Cindy’s questions.

(see 7, 10, 13, 14)

Group 2: Negative suggestions that persuade Cindy go to other places because LA

and San Diego are not good places for winter.

(see 1)

Group 3: Disagree with previous response and try to correct it.

(see 2, 4, 6, 11)

Group 4: Defend for mistake.

(see 5)

Group 5: Wonder about Cindy’s English.

(see 8)

Group 6: Etiquette issue brought up due to Cindy’s cross-posting her question.

(see 12)

Group 7: Try to focus on topic, an attempt made by Cindy. (see 3, 9)

Group 1 and 2 are the most desirable responses because they offer both strengths and weakness of the tour in winter.

Group 3 and 4 can be desirable unless they went a bit far off-topic because they seemed only argued back and forth where is Disneyland and where is Disney World, without addressing Cindy’s question. It’s fine to disagree and defend for your standing. But, participants seemed to have forgotten the major purpose of the discussion. Besides, personal judgment against other people was involved, which should have been avoided.

Group 5 is an extreme off-topic example, touching nothing about Cindy’s question.

Group 6 is legitimate because posting the same message to many newsgroups is regarded as an inappropriate use of bandwidth. (But, it may not be the rule in google group.)

Group 7 is necessary because it serves as a mechanism to keep people on topic.

Following the question of “power vs authority”

2004-09-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

In academia, in “most” cases, professors gain authority based on their scholarship and experiences. “Most” students in their early stage at school don’t surpass their professors in terms of their expertise in a certain subject area. I put quotation mark outside the word “most” because there may be exceptions, who know “better” than their professors.

Because of this, professors are probably in a better position to “decide” the direction and content of the courses they are teaching. I don’t prefer the word “control” because, to me, it denotes “force”.

It’s understandable that people want to maximize the benefit of what they obtain from class and wish the materials as well as the way materials are distributed be tailored to their individual interests, learning strategies, and future blueprint. However, in reality, it may not be possible for a single course to meet everybody’s needs.

When some of our needs are not satisfied, we can make it up by employing strategies similar to what Gulfidan used “I try to connect course requirements as much as possible to my own writings. Even sometimes it seems impossible. But most of the times, when I try to connect them to my own writings, my perspective becomes wider.” In addition, we can take other classes that teach what is omitted in this one. Or we can contact the professor for this particular class for further information or clarification, which, I’m sure, is welcome by most professorate. The key point is we realize that there’s no uniform standard for a “best” course.

Professors are human beings. They don’t make “perfect” decisions. And who decides what “perfect” is? Still, I think “most” professors will want to convey as much valuable and useful information as they can within the limited time span.

Yes, when we take a class, we are “instructed” of what to do and how to do. However, disagreement or negotiation is allowed. We disagree and discuss with the professors. We negotiate with them a better way to coordinate the class. We propose suggestions about what to teach that suits most students’ needs. We even help solve problems that baffle the professors. We have the freedom to control for ourselves.

At the same time, in no way am I saying all our disagreement or negotiations will end up with a pleasant solution. The students may still have to obey the rules set by the professor or learn what they don’t think useful.

Again, there’s no right and wrong answer to this “power vs authority” topic. It can be either right or wrong for the students to perceive they are robbed of their power of control. It just depends on the situation.

Any comment?

USENET

2004-09-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

I can identify what Wader discovered that some groups are dying down with very few postings. Still, some groups remain active. My overall impression of newsgroup is embedded in my surfing experiences stated below:

I was not familiar with google discussion group. Most of my friends told me it’s one of the most common online discussion groups. I started with a review of google group FAQ in order to warm up, which took about 30 minutes. Before I could decide where to go, I spent about 2 hours just surfing around to see what topic each category and subcategory was focused on and what kind of articles have been mainly posted as well as their responses. Reading through different groups and along threads of themes is time consuming but can be informative and entertaining. I read about jokes, probing their irony, personal stories that reveal desperation and call for help.

At the same time, I admit my dislike of the poor structure of google group. I hope it can be reorganized so that newcomers are presented a more elucidating map of where to go. Somewhere of the current structure is almost like a maze. Some articles don’t seem very relevant to the title, which is confusing.

It took me quite several hours before I saw my posting there. I’m not sure if I’d very much rely on this group for questions and answers but I would be willing to share my ideas and offer advice wherever appropriate.

Then, I spent about 3 hours reading alt (alt.12hr, alt.2600, alt.acting), humanities (humanities.lit, humanities.language), soc (soc.support.depression), talk (talk.environment) and misc (misc.kids, misc.fitness). I must confess 3 hours is far from enough to read closely in each of these groups. Given such a miscellaneous range, I topic what interested me first. I’m not sure if I can believe all that was said in the group discussion, but my feelings were constantly stirred. Among these groups, I like talk.environment best because it’s like an encyclopedia, all embracing, informing me of so much without turning on TV or going out.

The one topic I participated is about “children create sign language from scratch”.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=humanities.language.sanskrit&selm=zSm2d.38562%24Ot3.5118%40twister.nyc.rr.com

Here’s the web site of the report:

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/040916_signfrm.htm

I was a language instructor and interested in learning more about language acquisition process.

The research finding posted on this site reminded me of the different language learning process between children and adult. I also remember on the 2003 Institute, one speaker claimed children learn the same as adults, which I disagreed. I spent 45 minutes looking for some theoretical foundations that I drew on.

Another URL I posted message is

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=zh-CN&lr=&ie=UTF-8&frame=right&th=bb0cfbb1fe5d2b19&seekm=e509d039.0409091501.24ef6f60%40posting.google.com

A Taiwan student asked for advice how to improve English. I gave him/her my advice based on my experiences. Hope that’ll help!

At the end, I had mixed feelings toward newsgroup. And here I’m posting some questions and would like to hear about your comments.

1. Why do some people don’t use Usenet any more? What is its limitation?

2. Do our class members come to google groups if not for assignment?

I truly enjoy reading everybody's blog, very enlightening... That normally takes 2 -3 hours. It may take longer if I need time for comtemplation and response.

Time spent

2004-09-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

Altogether, I spent a about 5 hours on assigned readings, writing blog, reading others' blogs and comments (which is one of the most favorite activities) and some outside readings concerning social software.

Reflecting on my Internet history

2004-09-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

I don't remember exactly when I was first exposed to the Internet. I just remember I got my computer hooked up with internet on a sizzling summer day of 1996. At that time, the major favor it did for me was emailing. I threw myself into the arms of internet every evening to write to my families, feeling so happy to have access to such an economical and speedy route of communication. Oddly enough, I didn't think much of surfing on the internet world.

I didn't use instant messaging until after I came to the Sates in 2000. Almost suddenly, the Pacific ocean dimished the power of Email, which became insufficient for me to shed my tears and pour my pain from mountains of readings and writtings to my Dad and Mom. I need instant conspondence. Gererously and warmly, Yahoo Messager stretched out her hands and enlightened my desperate heart with her advanced function. From then on, my parents and I were able to "hear" and "see" each other at our designated time. Although my webcam distorted my face and the so-so DSL often put off my voice, (which resulted in my parents' bursting into laughter after nearly 8 seconds I finished a joke), I was full of gratitude. Instant messaging is just a neat way to keep in touch with families and friends.

During my first year of taking Master courses in IT, I learnt about wiki, introduced by Bart. Yahoo group list also proved a nice tool for communication and discussion among class members and between professors and class.

I heard about blog two years ago but never created one for myself until last week, as required by 7150. Although I haven't posted much except "hello world", I would like to make a better use of my personal blog by sharing my thoughts and ideas and exchanging comments with these intelligent people!I like talking with friends and colleagues about what they think is cool and how the cool stuff works. Their excitingly red faces were so convincing that I was often taken onto this shortcut of learning in a matter of seconds.

It's not too much to say Internet has become part of my life. The first thing in the morning after I wake up is to jump off bed and turn on the computer to check email and read news. Besides personal interests, professionally, I used internet to search for useful materials for my Chinese teaching. I also relied on internet for valuable information about my research interest. Free, fast, convenient, I can hardly think of a reason not to love Internet!

Hello

2004-09-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hello World!