(Just like) Starting over
Well, it’s been almost four months since I’ve moved to Chapel Hill and I’ve been completely silent here. I guess I could now say that I’m pretty much settled here, especially after finally getting our car (Barack), key component of anyone’s life in a US non-metropoli. I’m having a great time at the School of Information and Library Sciences at UNC, the faculty is great and I’ve been very lucky to land into a cohort of extremely passionate people who are very warm and sharing.
I’ve (naturally) already set up my UNC homepage, where I’ll be keeping track of my work as I advance in the program. As I state in that page, the brief explanation of my study focus is:
“I’m interested in how we can enable new forms of human communication through information systems, especially through social network systems.”
I’m working as a RA at the Interaction Design Lab with Prof. Marchionini. I’ve joined a project they were working on a results framework for Information Retrieval, and we’ll soon be starting my own project related to work-based online communities and learning in immersive environments (Second Life). I’ve been taking my first steps on second life these last weeks, if you hang there and want to meet me and show me around, help me learn some tricks, just let me know and I’ll send you my SL nick.
Aside from research and the two mandatory courses, I’m taking Fred Stutzman’s class on Technologies of Friendship, which is basically an overview of Computer Mediated Communication, so I’m having a great time there reading and discussing some brilliant research and writing about the subjects that stir my nerves, the class is a small group of very passionate people as well.
In the short term, I’m developing a mini lit review for a problem I want to research further later on. I got this idea last year when reflecting on how I’m using the different forms of CMC that we regularly use. I’m wondering; what takes you to choose which plattform to use for communicating different messages to your friends? What levels of intimacy and privacy do these different tools support? I have an initial chart on my head, but I’ve not sat down to draw it yet, I just wanted to start typing this off my chest in hopes of getting my blog moving once again, and hopefully now stay more focused on topic and attract more regular readers and comments.
I’m also planning to publish a couple of the assignments I’ve prepared for my coursework, in particular an overview of (my beloved) Flickr.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Me daré el lujo de comentar en español :p
Me parece genial lo que estás haciendo. Sin embargo, Second Life ha estado perdiendo popularidad (al menos es lo que he leído en blogs de videojuegos).
La verdad mi único parámetro actual para elegir una red es si hay gente conocida ahí, aunque también influye un poco el nivel de las herramientas para generar contenido que tengan. Actualmente sólo participo en facebook, flickr y delicious :)
November 20th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Gracias Eduardo por tus saludos y tus ideas.
To answer you and explain the project further: although I agree with you that the main criteria for personal use of social network sites - and I have said this many times - is the presence or absence of your friends, our study is more focused on the educational possibilities of immersive environments. The goal is to develop an educational scheme for a particular community of practice within this environment. Although we know that the peak interest in SL happened some time ago, we still believe these systems offer a great potentiality as an educational set-up, and that is the part we want to develop in more depth.
November 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I agree on the great potentiality of videogames as educational tools. I’m working on a project at the Center for Mathematical Modelling, we are designing a multiplayer game which provides some implicit educational contexts though competition and gameplay. The game needs a strong “social network feeling” to promote participation in the educational contexts.
Perhaps we could talk about this some day :)
November 21st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Eduardo, I’d be happy to see you soon and talk about this!
While I agree that there’s education potential in games, I don’t see Second Life as a game, as it does not have formal goals, strategies, nor winners: It’s more like a playground than a game.
The way we are approaching this is more focused on emulating and developing new education environments such as classroom and lecturing set-ups, but more importantly, more participatory forms of person-to-person education.