Marion's CCTE Blog

2006-11-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

2005-12-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

IE Project- A Recap

As I’ve blogged about throughout the semester, I dedicated my IE project to helping West Siders for Responsible Development. The community group has been fighting to stop Extell Development Company from building two high-rise towers on Broadway near 100^th Street. While the group had incited several protests and attracted a growing number of local residents, they have not fully tapped the power of social software to help advance their cause. My goals were to help the group spread the word about Extell’s plans, to help them recruit the support of more UWS residents as well as community outsiders, and to identify communities confronting similar challenges in order to join forces or gain insight based on their experiences.

Board members were thrilled that I wanted to help them create more of a web presence so that they could connect with more Upper West Side residents and community groups. I started by creating a wiki that includes the following: background on West Siders, a link to their Bloomberg petition, contact information for city officials, sample letters to city officials (in English and Spanish), recent news stories about the group, information about recent and upcoming events, and an overview on how individuals can get involved. Board members agreed that the information in this resource was necessary and much more extensive than the information on their blog, which they used to post occasional announcements. They were concerned, however, about the risks of using something that’s open source. Their current plan is to transfer the information from the wiki I developed onto their blog. In the meantime, they have committed to activating the links on their current blog. They also decided to create a master mailing list and data bank so that they can increase their online activity (to date, most of their communication with members has been through direct mail).

My other efforts have been less successful. With the help of Jonah, some Web research, and a few NY Times articles I recently blogged about, I have identified some local organizations that are confronting similar development issues. I proposed that West Siders for Responsible Development join forces with these opposition groups to stop all of these projects. If these groups unite in their struggle to resist irresponsible development of this kind, they will likely have more power and influence. While my primary contacts at West Siders agree with this, I’ve had trouble establishing connections between these groups.

I am proud of my efforts thus far to introduce West Siders to the potential benefits of social software. At the same time, the process of change has been slower and more frustrating than I anticipated. If a primary goal of this project was to learn firsthand how hard to is to build networks and foster change using social software, that goal was certainly achieved.

Thanks for a great semester, everyone! See you online…

Marion

2005-12-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

Last week I came across a New York Times article about a development plan that threatens to gentrify Manhattan’s west side in ways similar to the plan proposed by Extell Development Company. General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church plans to knock down a four-story building on its campus in Chelsea and replace it with a 17-story building. The seminary would take up the first four floors, and the Brodsky Organization (the real estate company), would use the top floors to build luxury apartments in a glass tower.

Unlike the Extell plan I previously blogged about, this proposal is still in its early stages. While Extell was able to build “as-of-right,” the seminary still has to get the plan approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and receive a special zoning permit from the City Planning Commission to construct a building that well exceeds the legal limit for the area.

Just as Upper West Side residents object to Extell Development’s plan to build two large towers, Chelsea residents are furious about this proposed development project. As described in the article, 75 Chelsea residents expressed their objections at a neighborhood meeting.

I have proposed that West Siders for Responsible Development and the Chelsea residents join forces to stop these development projects in their tracks. I would also like them to join forces with the Broadway Dance Center, located on West 57^th Street. It is one of the largest dance studios in the city and has been around for more than 20 years. As the landlord of the building, Extell Developtment Company’s newest plan is to push them out of the building so they can develop the property.

I believe that these three examples reflect how the real estate market is squeezing “real people” out of the city (artists, teachers, etc.) to make room for wealthier residents. If these opposition groups unite in their struggle to resist irresponsible development of this kind, they will likely have more power and influence. While social software would facilitate communication and planning between these groups, those spearheading the opposition efforts do not seem to be of the “social software generation.” My initial efforts to build virtual bridges between these groups have stopped short of being productive.

2005-11-24T13:26:00.000-05:00

Navigating Terra Incognita

In Linked, Barabasi describes how the Web is fragmented into four major continents due to the directedness of the links. Amidst this fragmentation, there is “terra incognita” (p.162), areas of the Web that remain undiscovered by search engines and are unreachable by surfing. He explains that Web is full of “disjointed directed paths” (p.167) that dictate the Web’s navigability.

Following Barabasi’s reasoning,, the strength of a webpage’s presence and accessibility is almost exclusively dictated by the number of links attached to it. I’m still unclear, however, about how important it is for these links to be relevant to the website’s objectives or target community. Is there really value in establishing links between sources that are inherently unrelated? For example, if I get 20 opera singers and 50 ice-cream truck drivers to link their personal websites to the blog developed by West Siders for Responsible Development, will that really help the organization in any way? Will this linking alone rescue them from the “terra incognita” that Barabasi describes?

The answers to these questions will help me plan my next course of action with my issue entrepreneurship project. I have gotten very few responses from organizations whose interests I thought were very similar to those of West Siders for Responsible Development. Is it better to keep pursuing those organizations or to broaden my efforts to organizations and individuals whose interests seem only marginally aligned?

2005-11-06T23:01:00.000-05:00

I’ve gotten some solid feedback on the wiki I’ve been setting up for West Siders for Responsible Development. It’s not the hippest thing in the world, but it seems like it will serve its purpose until they decide how much money (if any) they can invest in a flashier resource. Once they approve of the content, I’m going to share it with a few other organizations I’ve been hearing about (mostly from Jonah—thank you!!!) I briefly met a couple of board members last week. It’s nice to be able to attach at least a couple of names with faces. I’m planning to meet with Toni, my primary contact, sometime this week. She seems uncomfortable interacting online, which is probably a main reason why they’ve relied mostly on regular mail to communicate with their members.

Toni is excited about the wiki in that it will allow other members to contribute to information upkeep. However, she worries that the fact that it’s open source will make more work for her by creating content management demands that haven’t exist before. How worried do you think she should be about people posting inappropriate/inaccurate information? Also, how vulnerable is a wiki to spam and things like that?

Citing Barabasi’s Linked, Molly and Stephen recently blogged about the vulnerability of networks that depend on one person. It seems that West Siders is in a position of this kind—without the continued devotion of a few core members, the network would likely fall apart. As Stephen touched on, a network can become stronger when it allows people to explore their passions, beliefs, perspectives, and aspirations. I hope that, by increasing the online presence of West Siders, the network will be strengthened through the recruitment of more people who care about the issues and principles embraced by the organization. This resource will also hopefully result in increased interaction among members and, in this way, enhance feelings of community and cohesion within the network.

In Where the Action is, Dourish describes Heidegger’s concept of “being-in-the-world.” He writes, “…as we act through technology that has become ready-to-hand, the technology itself disappears from our immediate concerns. We are caught up in the performance of the work; our mode of being is one of ‘absorbed coping.’ The equipment fades into the background.” When working with social software, it seems that the magic happens only once you’ve reached this stage—finally, you stop noticing the mediated nature of the communication and you can actually get something done. It’s a struggle to achieve this level of comfort, and it requires motivation, trust, and courage to so drastically change the forms of interaction you’ve always used. I hope that my efforts with West Siders for Responsible Development will jumpstart their journey to this point. Once this happens, I think they would notice an increase in productivity, organization, and a strengthening of their network.

2005-10-20T12:36:00.000-04:00

Since my last posting, I have been able to make contact with Toni Cindrich, the Treasurer and Tech person of West Siders for Responsible Development. She is relieved that some help is on the way. Toni explained that she's been operating as a "one man band" and it's become overwhelming to keep up with emails and questions about the growing organization.

Toni expressed interest in upgrading from their blog to a website. In response to Ulises' suggestion, I proposed creating a wiki instead. I explained that a wiki would allow other members of West Siders to contribute updates, post articles, make relevant announcements, etc. This would, not only foster the ongoing participation of members and an online community, but would also relieve Toni of some of the burden she's been feeling by allowing others to keep information up-to-date.

I created a shell of this wiki and I'm awaiting her response. In light of the fact that most of their active members are older folks who don't have internet access (according to the VP I spoke with), enhancing the organization's web presence in this way could help attract younger group of people who may not be aware of the organization or Extell's development plan. Before I proceed, though, I want to make sure she's comfortable with this type of format.

2005-10-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

Conversation with Miki Fiegel Picinich

This morning I had a long discussion with Miki Fiegel Picinich, President of West Siders for Responsible Development (see my previous posting for background on this organization). I called Miki because I hadn’t gotten a response from the email I sent last week explaining my interest in using social software to help stop Extell’s development project. The person who receives the emails has been out of town.

Miki was pleased that I’m using the issue entrepreneurship project as a way to get involved with their organization. She said that their most active advocates are elderly community members. This likely explains why they haven’t developed much of a Web presence- Miki explained that many members do not have access to the internet. Posters, handouts, and mailers are the dominant means by which they spread the word about meetings and protests. It is quite possible that the organization is not reaching more tech-savvy individuals who would get involved if news delivery and communication were facilitated online.

I told Miki that I would like to help them create more of a web presence and link them to more Upper West Side residents, community groups, advocates for affordable housing. She agreed when I suggested that their blog could benefit from more background information on the development issue. I said I would provide this information on my blog and link it to theirs (I may ultimately decide to post that information directly to their blog if that makes more sense). I also said I would round up recent articles about West Siders’ struggle with Extell and make links available from my blog.

Miki mentioned that there’s a community group in Park West Village (Columbia Ave. between 97 & 100^th St.) that is protesting a similar development plan and has expressed interest in joining forces with West Siders for Responsible Development. It seems that communication between these organizations has been predominantly face-to-face. I would like to help facilitate online communication and news sharing.

Miki said she would put me in touch with Toni Cindrich, the Treasurer and tech person. Hopefully Toni will give me some details about their current online communication strategies and efforts. In the meantime, I continue to gather news about the organization and brainstorm ways to maximize the value of my contributions.

2005-10-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

I read the comments to Ulises’ posting and was relieved that I’m not the only one struggling to solidify a topic/approach for the issue entrepreneurship project. I have the workings of an idea and figured I’d blog about it as a way to organize my thoughts and [hopefully] elicit ideas from you guys. As Anthony wrote in his comment, this project could be a good excuse for me to turn my idle complaints into action (I can still complain though, right?).

My idea relates to a plan to build two high-rise towers on Broadway near 100^th Street. The developer is Extell Development Company. As explained in Columbia Spectator, these buildings would be twice as tall as surrounding structures and would drastically alter the physical landscape of the neighborhood. The building would be comprised of luxury apartments starting at $2 million. One objector spoke of the influx of wealthy residents to the middle-income neighborhood: “No young people, no elderly people, no artists, no teachers can live in the neighborhood anymore because of the rising prices. We’re missing a vibrant part of the community.” Clearly, the construction of these buildings will advance the gentrification already evident in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

West Siders for Responsible Development is a local group that is voicing opposition to Extell’s plans. Despite their protests, Extell is proceeding with the plan “as-of-right;” the company does not need zoning changes or permission from the community board because they bought the air development rights that allow them to build higher than normal zoning would allow (they bought these rights from a church, believe it or not). Central goals of West Siders for Responsible Development are to change the area’s zoning laws and to halt Excell’s current development plan. The group intends to send a petition to Mayor Bloomberg and hopes he will intervene before Extell completes the buildings’ foundations.

To date, West Siders for Responsible Development have incited five protests and established a blog to which they post occasional updates regarding protests and meetings. While their efforts and accomplishments are admirable, it seems the group has not fully tapped the power of new media to help advance their cause. Using social software, I’d like to help the group spread the word about Extell’s plans and its negative consequences. I’d like to help them recruit the support of more UWS residents, as well as community outsiders who object to the gentrification of lower- and middle-income neighborhoods. Furthermore, I’d like to identify communities that have confronted similar challenges in order to gain insight into opposition strategies that proved effective.

So I guess I now I have a better grasp on what it is I’d like to do. If only I knew where to begin…

2005-10-05T14:03:00.000-04:00

Bette Gray’s article in Journal of Distance Education (full citation below), offers insight into the development and role of Communities of Practice in informal learning environments.

Gray recruited 43 coordinators of the Alberta Community Adult Learning Councils to volunteer to join an online Community of Practice for one year. The job of these coordinators is to organize community-based adult education at the local level. Coordinators are geographically dispersed (mostly residing in small rural towns), work alone, and do not know each other. Volunteer participants ranged from experienced coordinators to recent hires. The online forum was developed to serve as a means by which coordinators could share their experiences, learn from one other, and feel more connected to the organization.

At the foundation of Gray’s investigation was the theoretical construct of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This theory explores how individuals learn through everyday social practices, rather than through environments that are intentionally designed to support learning. Because members of Communities of Practice share an interest in a domain and goal, they will engage in collective learning. Through their interactions, community members build relationships and develop shared experiences, stories, and practices that become a common knowledge base to be shared with newcomers.

The emergence and value of a shared, transferable knowledge base is certainly not unique to the Community of Practice framework. In “Workers and Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers,” Mark Poster points out that collective knowledge is passed onto future generations through cultural traditions, recording devices, and written documentation (including early encyclopedias). The Community of Practices framework, however, emphasizes that the ongoing interactions, collaborative learning, and the enculturation of newcomers are critical because they shape the community as a whole, shape members’ sense of identity within the community, and shape the identity of the practice itself.

By observing and moderating the group’s interactions for one year, Gray found that participants did indeed come to function as a Community of Practice. Online participation enabled informal and contextualized learning. Furthermore, participation in the Community of Practice helped enculturate new hires, shape the identity of the practice, increase members’ understanding of their work, and define their role as a member of the group.

As previously mentioned, central to this theoretical framework is that individuals develop a new sense of identity as a result of their participation in the community. Albert Borgmann seems to refute this possibility. In his article, “Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community,” he writes, “In the community-member relation, it is the community that is primary and assigns each person his or her place, function, and responsibility” (Feenberg & Barney, p.54) Contrary to Gray’s view, Borgmann suggests that a person’s identity and role within an online community is fixed from the outset, rather than shaped as a result of community participation. Borgmann presents a further challenge to the theory of Community of Practice when he writes, “…the Internet works as the telephone has worked—it supports but does not produce communities” (Feenberg & Barney, p.58). In light of Gray’s findings and her support for the Community of Practice framework, I believe the researcher would argue that online interactions enable both the creation and maintenance of communities.

REFERENCES:

Borgmann, A. (2004). Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community? In Andrew Feenberg & Darin Barney (Eds.), Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (pp.53-67). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Gray, B. (2004). Informal learning in an online Community of Practice. Journal of Distance Education, 19(1); 20-35.

Poster, M. (2004). Workers and Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers. In Andrew Feenberg & Darin Barney (Eds.), Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (pp.83-100). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

2005-09-22T13:28:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-09-15T17:40:00.000-04:00

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..."

2005-09-14T15:24:00.000-04:00

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