Careers, Internet, People•
on January 11th, 2010•
How can social networking technologies be used for career exploration networks? New communication technologies — especially the Internet — now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. Today, new social media applications are leveraging our human nature to “share” or combine our intellects.
While the human activity of “social networking” has existed since of the dawn of humankind. Today’s students are leveraging social media technologies like no generation before them. This acceptance of social networks, as an essential part of one’s life, offers new collaborative opportunities.
Separating the Signal from the Noise
Unlike today’s monolithic social networks and their incumbent chatter, Career Learning Networks have a body of knowledge — detailed career information — that acts as the centerpiece of conversation. They focus dialogue between students, peers, parents and industry professionals. These networks are purpose-built and go well beyond “social,” offering collective insight into very specific areas. The are designed to be person-centric.
This is Still Social Networking 1.0
As the phenomena of social networking continues to grow, traditional educational establishments are embracing their power. The National School Boards Association encourages educators to take advantage of online social networks because students view them so much and because the sites can benefit student-teacher relationships and increase interest in extracurricular activities.
At a music club in a Missouri school, meeting and event attendance increased by 50 to 60 percent after the club created a Facebook profile. Students preferred going there for notifications rather than checking their school e-mail address, which was seen as uncool.
One teacher who uses Facebook to bridge the communication gap between herself and her students said the relationships with some of her students have expanded in ways that never would have happened had their contact been limited to just the classroom. “The students can see from my interests on my profile that I like Eastern philosophy. One of them listed that as an interest too, so we shared thoughts on a topic that would otherwise never have entered our dialog,” wrote Alyssa Giese in a 2007 Teacher Magazine article.
Ethical Considerations of Social Networking
Students also appreciate the informal setting of online communication. One admitted he never would have contributed to class discussions, but the anonymity of online communication emboldened him to participate. That, in turn, changed his teacher’s perception of his discussion abilities.
While the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, private social networks, such as Career Networks, have a narrow focus, are invite only and offer students, parents and teachers behavioral boundaries. Career Networks are places where students can live and grow as professionals. Rather than imposing on everyone’s right to free speech, it’s better to mark boundaries for expression that everyone accepts. Educating parents and students together on the educational benefits of social networking sites can create a better understanding between them as they explore online communication in a more safe and responsible manner.
Written by Todd Borghesani
Related articles
Meteoric Growth in Social Networking – “It’s a Small World after All,” or Is It? (windmillnetworking.com)
Who Uses Social Networks and What Are They Like? (Part 1) (readwriteweb.com)
The importance of business social networking (socialpress.co.za)
Internet, People•
on December 28th, 2009•
This generation of high school and college students — The Gamer Generation — stands to have the greatest impact on our society. At more than 90 million people, the “gamer generation” is already bigger than the baby boom.
They are already aware of the extraordinary problems of 21st century: feeding a growing population with a limited amount of arable land; the green revolution and alternative energy, managing the impacts of global warming and greater energy demands; and the spread of health threats that respect no national borders.
Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. It is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.
They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, Playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
The gamer generation will dominate the workforce and they are already changing the rules of business. All the hours immersed in game culture have created masses of employees with unique attributes: bold but measured risk taking, amazing ability to multitask, and unexpected leadership skills: 21st century skills that employers want.
The Gamer Generation innately understands the nature of online life.
The philosopher Gilles Deleuze is a spring chicken in the history of philosophy, living and working from 1925 to 1995. Yet his influence has surged in the last 20 years, vying today with the most prominent philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He established a different definition of “virtual” that speaks to games and online experience in particular.
The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual.
Exactly what Proust said of states of resonance must be said of the virtual: “Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract”; and symbolic without being fictional. Indeed, the virtual must be defined as strictly a part of the object – as though the object had one part of itself in the virtual into which it plunged as though into an objective dimension.” – Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Deleuze opposed essentialism, that is, the notion that existences, such as human beings, could be distilled into a single common identity. Instead, he saw existence in terms of multiplicity in all its forms – that, for instance, we as human beings are not single selves but multiple selves spread out in time, that life itself exists in a continuum and state of alchemical flow and information exchange.
What we think of as “virtual” is in fact very real and important, accessed on a parallel dimension rife with meaning.
He lifts the virtual up above the “actual,” or the material manifestation of what we observe in metaspace. Deleuze’s virtual is neither intrinsically inferior nor superior to the material, but it is on an incomparably different plane of existence. This is a concept that would resonate with many World of Warcraft players. When we explore worlds online and connect with other players across vast physical distances, we do not become less real. Arguably, for those who have experienced this life, we feel more real – our physical masks pulled down, revealing the structure of ideas, passions and contemplations beneath.
Next time you start to castigate your son or daughter for spending so much time friending on Facebook, playing games, and socializing in Second Life, think about their play as pioneering work.
Excerpted, in part, from Erin Hoffman’s feature article, “Ditching The V-Word,” in Escapist.
Education, Internet, People•
on December 21st, 2009•
Washington D.C. — With the coolness of a card shark at the final table of the World Series of Poker, Matt Bergin pulls the hood of his brown sweatshirt over his head and concentrates on the task at hand.
The task: hacking into as many target computers as he can and then defending those computers from attacks by other skilled hackers.
Other skilled hackers like Michael Coppola, 17, a high school senior who, at this very moment, is hunched over a keyboard in his Connecticut home. Or like Chris Benedict, 21, from the tiny town of Nauvoo, Illinois. Chris is sitting silently nearby, one of 15 “All Star” hackers who have taken over this spacious hotel conference room.
At days end, the moderator of this unusual computer challenge declares the best of the best: Benedict is the winner, king of the hacker hill, followed by Bergin and Coppola.
The trio — a job seeker, a grape distributor for a vineyard and a student — are precisely the type of people whom organizers of this event hoped to attract: young techies with perhaps little formal computer education who, nonetheless, could contribute to the defense of the nation’s networks. In many cases, organizers of the U.S. Cyber Challenge say, hackers’ skills go unrecognized or unappreciated by those around them and sometimes even by themselves.
“I thought that I would get demolished,” Benedict said. “I didn’t think I would get anything at all.”
Organizers say the competition is aimed at identifying young people with exceptional computer skills and inspiring them to join the country’s woefully understaffed ranks of cybersecurity specialists needed to protect systems used by the military, industry and everyday people.
Hackers may see the U.S. Cyber Challenge, which culminated last Thursday, as a game. But Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, an information security training institute, says it is really a national talent search.
And one that gives hackers an outlet not usually open to them.
“This is to capture kids that can be very good at this, whose only real option is to do illegal things with it because there’s no place to do it in school; there’s no place to do it legally,” Paller said. “This creates an environment where they can show their skills and advance their skills and do it in the nation’s interest rather than for other purposes.”
A high-stakes game. Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell says the United States “will suffer a major catastrophic event” in the cyber arena if it doesn’t boost its ability to protect its computer infrastructure.
A terrorist or extremist group could attack the financial system in New York, destroying data to cause the loss of confidence in banking transactions, McConnell said. They could follow up with an attack on the power grid during a snowstorm. They could cause trains to collide and could release contaminants in the New York subway.
Imagine being a top hacker and working for the National Security Agency. The new command will at least initially be part of the Pentagon’s Strategic Command, which is responsible for computer-network security and other missions. The command is meant to begin working by October and to be fully operating by October 2010.
Are you THE ONE. The goal of the U.S. Cyber Challenge is to find and develop 10,000 cybersecurity specialists to help the U.S. regain the lead in cyberspace. But McConnell feels that even more is needed. He suggests legislation to create a National Security Act for cybereducation.
As our world increasingly becomes more dependent on the cyber world, we need a growing array of private companies, public infrastructure and top secret government experts to protect us. Could this be your future world?
Internet•
on December 4th, 2009•
Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city.
Italy’s culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports.
Among the ruins visible on the search engine’s free mapping service are the town’s statues, temples and theatres.The city was buried in ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and was not discovered until the 18th Century.
The volcanic debris preserved many of the city’s buildings, frescos, silverware, mosaics and other artefacts.
“Giving people a chance to take a virtual stroll through Pompeii will give an extraordinary boost to Italian tourism,” Ansa quoted Mario Resca of the culture ministry’s heritage promotion department as saying.
The Google Maps service, launched in 2007, provides panoramic street-level views of more than 100 cities around the world. It also includes the ancient heritage site of Stonehenge.
by BBC
Internet•
on December 3rd, 2009•
Microsoft has had a collection of mapping tools and assets that haven’t been fully utilized or received the play (or usage) of Google Maps. But in an announcement today Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google.
First, Bing Maps is introducing “Street Side” in 56 US metro areas, with the ambition to go global eventually. This is the Microsoft answer to Google Street View: immersive street-level photography that, like Street View, allows users to “walk down the street” and explore neighborhoods in cities. Microsoft began Street Side at roughly the same time as Street View but hadn’t released anything (to date) other than this limited demo site.
The environment that Microsoft has created is richer than Street View and brings “augmented reality” into Maps in a compelling way. Microsoft has also utilized its 3D mapping assets in creating the new experience. Here’s how the Microsoft press material describes the technology behind the new Maps experience:
Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally “stitch” together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.
The one “catch” is that you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to make it all work. But once installed the new Bing Maps beta site enables a wide range of experiences, search and discovery tools that haven’t been available (or maybe possible) previously.
In addition there’s an “apps gallery” that enable data overlays directly on the map. All of the current modules are Microsoft created but the company will enable third parties to integrate their content into Bing Maps (e.g., Yelp reviews) in the near term.
by GREG STERLING