Individual Analysis:

In “Autistic Social Software,” which presents a portion of Danah Boyd’s talk at the 2004 Supernova Conference, Boyd argues that most “sociable media” is designed without consideration of the practices and needs of its intended users.

Boyd discusses how people feel the need to create multiple identities on the Internet in order to protect their privacy and conceal who they are. She criticizes those who encourage people to “fragment their identity,” and believes it results in an online version of multiple personality disorder. Boyd refers to this as “asinine” and asserts that “people aren’t fragmented.”

Only a portion of her larger talk is published here, so it’s possible that I’m taking her words out of context and misrepresenting her beliefs. However, it seems that Boyd is overlooking the advantages of the ability to create different identities using social software. In the anonymous setting, people are able to explore aspects of themselves that they feel they must conceal in the real world. Socially inhibited people can act boldly in virtual communities where they feel they belong; when private User Names are used in learning settings, timid students or students whose opinions differ from those of the mainstream may find a strong voice in class discussions. In cases like these, social software offers the opportunity for people to free themselves from the bounds imposed in real life. Over time, they may find ways to unite their “separate identities” and, in this way, redefine themselves in the “real world.”

Boyd presents three ways to make technology work in the context of peoples’ lives. Briefly, these entail 1) put a technology out there and demand that it fits into peoples’ lives; 2) put it out there and see what about it catches on, and use that information to understand users and how the software fits into their lives; 3) Understand the people and their needs and then develop a technology that complements their practices. Boyd believes that the second and third approaches are proper ways to design social technology. When it comes to using software in learning environments, I argue that only the third approach is acceptable. A formidable obstacle to technology integration is that people feel that technology will waste class time and fail to support relevant knowledge development. As responsible instructional designers, we cannot market social learning software (and we shouldn’t even attempt to develop it) until we have a thorough understanding of the perspectives and lives of target learners, their learning needs, and the learning objectives of their environment. If enough formative research is conducted throughout the planning process, social software that is developed for the classroom will be flexible enough to meet students’ diverse needs and goals. To postpone efforts to learn about users until the technology is already in the classroom seems like a waste of time, resources, and opportunity.

Did anybody interpret her words differently?

MY TECHNO-BIOGRAPHY

Hello to you all. As far as introductions go, I’m the one who looked somewhere between confused and panicked whenever RSS feeds, del.icio.us and wikis were mentioned on Tuesday. Yeah, that was me. Pleased to report that something may have clicked the 27^th time I read the syllabus. If one becomes a magician when he learns his first card trick, I guess you can say I’m now a blogger.

I’ll begin my “Techno-Biography” with some background on how I made my way to the Communication and Education program at TC. After suffering through quite a few torturously boring jobs after college (as many English majors do), I worked for a research company called Inflexxion to develop Web-based risk assessments and health interventions. While I worked daily with designers and programmers, my responsibilities were to write educational content and supervise clinical field trials. This experience led me to NYU, where I got my Masters in the Communication, Education, and Technology program. My goal there was to begin to think about how the types of interactive programs developed at Inflexxion could be adapted to address issues relating to student achievement and motivation. I intend to explore this further as a doctoral student. While I never expect (and have no chance in hell) to become a serious designer or programmer, I do want to develop basic competencies while I’m at TC so that I can be a more effective member of a team that develops research-based instructional programs.

Now I guess it’s time for a flashback to my earliest experiences with computers…it would have to have been around second grade (1985?) that I started going to computer class in school. The focus of these classes was strictly to learn how to type (I thought I was being punished for having bad handwriting). As far as I can remember, no attempt was made in those early years to connect computer use with any other instructional content. At home, I began using a word processor. This was the extent of my computer use until about 7^th grade, when I was introduced to Oregon Trail and discovered ways to make all my friends get scurvy.

I didn’t start using the Internet until my first year in college (1995). Though I wrote a zillion research papers as an English/Spanish major, I still had to resort primarily to library visits and card catalogues to find articles and reliable information. My main use of the Internet was for emailing. In the 6 years since college, I’ve become completely dependent on the internet for keeping in touch with friends/family, doing academic research, reading the news, getting directions, and answering random questions that pop into my head (e.g., how does Duck Hunt work?).

Computers excite me and freak me out. I still find it amazing that I can email someone in China as easily as I can email the person next door. I want to contribute to the inevitable changes that will take place in classrooms as a result of computers' potential to make the world more connected and instruction more adaptive to the unique needs of a learner. And, with my interest in research, I want to help responsibly tap computers’ data-gathering ability and play a role in evaluating computer-based instructional programs that are (and will be) used in the school system.

Really looking foward to this class. As Ulises says, "See you all online..."

testing this...will put tech-profile here.