Videoconference 1

Thank you for your votes. As you can see our Doodle voting system shows that the most suitable time for us is at 20.00 (Estonian time!), 5th of September. The meeting is booked for one hour, but of course it depends on us how talkative we are going to be.

The purpose of the meeting is to:

• get to know each other
• provide a quick overview of how we are going to work in this course, how the course is set up, its structure and what kind of networked tools and services we are planning to use
• introduce assessment criteria and how to pass the course
• discuss about your problems, concerns, questions

We are going to use a Flashmeeting tool for carrying out our videoconference. In order to participate you have to click on the link below and provide your name.

http://fm.ea-tel.eu/fm/3cf510-31112

For participating, headsets and a microphone are required, but it is also recommended to use a webcam. You can also use a built-in microphone and simple earphones.

Just in case here are some steps if this Flashmeeting tool doesn’t seem very intuitive for you:

1. Click on the link http://fm.ea-tel.eu/fm/3cf510-31112
2. Click on “go to the meeting”
3. Choose “enter meeting as a guest” and click on “continue”. In this page you can also test your equipment (camera, headsets, microphone). In order to do that click on “open test application” and follow the instructions.
4. If you skip application testing just write down your name in the box, make a tick in the box “I agree to the terms” and click “enter”.

Flashmeeting allows to speak one person at a time. In order to say something you have to click on “start broadcasting” and after you have finished you should click on “stop broadcasting”. There is also an option for text-based chatting.

The meeting will be recorded and everybody can see the recording as soon as the meeting is over by clicking on the same link provided above. Thus, those who can’t attend can also watch the recording.

Looking forward to meet you all,

Terje & Sebastian

Let’s get started

In order to really get started with the course…

• …have a look at the course information on the Wikiversity course page.
• …create a personal Weblog for this course (no need to create a new one if you already have a working Weblog). In case of creating a new one, Blogger or WordPress are recommended platforms. If you encounter problems with creating a personal Weblog, don’t hesitate to contact the course facilitators.
• …provide an introduction of yourself in your personal Weblog.
• …register a personal Weblog in Edufeedr (in case your Weblog is created with Blogger of WordPress) and it is also recommended to add your name on Wikiversity’s participants page (click on Edit, add your data, and click on Save).
• …vote for the most suitable time for the first videoconference in Doodle (do it as soon as possible, but no later than Tuesday evening, 04.09.2012). In order to vote, type your name and make a tick where necessary (making a tick means that this time is suitable for you). The videoconference is going to be maximum 2 hours (depending on the number of participants) and we are going to use Flashmeeting tool (instructions of how to use this will follow soon). The purpose of the videoconference is to get to know each other and talk about how we are going to work in this course.
• …get yourself ready to do some work and have fun.

These tasks should be done by the end of the first week (09.09.2012).

If you have problems, questions, suggestions don’t hesitate to contact us.

Looking forward to explore the field with you!

Welcome to the course…

… “New interactive environments for collaborative work and study” in 2012.

This Weblog is going to be a central instrument for supporting the course.  We are going to post here course related announcements, provide latest additional information about the course, introduce various tasks and reflections.

General information about the course can be found on Wikiversity.

The course starts on September 3rd 2012, thus, keep an eye on this Weblog if you want to actively participate.

In case you are interested in what was happening in this course two years ago, feel free to browse through the content of this Weblog.

Looking forward to meet all of you,

Terje & Sebastian

A small note

Dear all,

I am in the middle of reading your last thoughts and I’ll come back to you latest in the beginning of next week with the final thoughts and pass/fail information.

Cheers,

Terje

The end is not far…

…and soon we have to draw a line for the whole course. Of course there are numerous aspects and interesting questions to focus on and discuss about. There are still three tasks (in addition to task 11) waiting for you.  I am going to post all of them here soon (during this week), so you can plan your pre-Christmas weeks accordingly. The deadline for the last task is scheduled for December 16th. Just in case I remind you of the passing criteria. 70% of the maximum points should be collected in order to pass the course. So, if we do some math here, 14 tasks means maximum 140 points and 70  % of it is 98 points, correct? Although, most of you have been very precise with the deadlines and have put a lot of effort in the tasks, hopefully this doesn’t give you a message to ignore the last tasks :).

Where to from here

In the following condensed paragraphs I am going to make an attempt to explicate our context a bit, where we stand and what our next focus is going to be…

I think you all agree that we are moving from mass-media (production, text, and audience ) to personalised and personal media (network forms, roles, relations, dynamics) through hybridization of old and existing media; and social and technological innovations (Lievrouw et al., 2006). We can choose how we create, understand and use media and various technologies. We are not only consumers, but also producers of information, artifacts, interactions, etc. For instance, networked technologies have become very extensive, embedded in our every day life and taken for granted in many domains. However, technologies are usually created by someone with particular purposes or uses in mind, but as the practices nowadays show, they can be adopted and used in unanticipated ways (Lievrouw et al., 2006). Every technology or system affords a certain range of interpretations and evokes user’s perception of its affordances (potential for actions and interactions). Technologies can be reinvented, reconfigured, recombined and renewed through continuous human actions and perceived technical and cultural resources. Such a phenomena affords new or different forms of social relationships, interactions, practices and experiences, but also remediate older forms. Thus, new technologies open up new, more active modes of engagement with technologies, but also with other people mediated by these technologies. People have opportunities to shape their environments and create new interactive environments according to their particular needs at a given point of time. In consequence, patterns of action and mediation differ a lot from those that were possible via old media and technologies.

As mentioned by Shedroff “Interactivity is all around us and a deep part of our lives”, in this course we are going to look at interactivity around us, mainly from the perspective of humans’ perception of opportunities to create and design their own (inter)actions with emerging technologies. Our focus is going to be on technologies as instruments that mediate and support human activities, not that much of communication per se.

So, to get an idea of a role of ‘mass media’ and ‘personal media’ in technology and society we start with the following article:

Lüders, M. (2008). Concpeptualising personal media. New media and society, 10(5), 683-702.

Next, as we started our course with the attempt to comprehend complex phenomena of human activities in technologically mediated settings by describing and analysing human activities without a clear framework, we are going to look into activity theory and its potential for this purpose. Understanding how to design, evaluate, implement, or customize technology can be achieved through understanding the human activities supported by the technology and how the technology is integrated into these activities. Activity theory provides a broad conceptual framework for describing the structure, development, and context of computer-supported activities. Later it also allows us to compare the components we came up with in our joint session with the components activity system framework offers.

Specific description of tasks will follow.

Literature: Lievrouw, L. A. & Livingstone, S. (2006) .Handbook of new media: social shaping and social consequences – fully revised student edition. SAGE Publications, London.

A joint online session – developing a potential framework for describing human activities

We have carried out some self-observations, we have described one of our activities (creating a study plan) common to all of us, we have analysed and compared other participants activity descriptions and now we are going to make an attempt to synthesize and generalize our previous work to develop a potential conceptual framework for describing human activities.

So, we are going to have a joint session on Thursday, 21st of October at 20.00 (Estonian time). We are going to use Flashmeeting (the same tool we used for our introductory meeting) to get together and get the process started. This is the Flashmeeting link.

No extra preparation is needed, but just think for a moment about your individual activity descriptions and comparisons. Good mood, enthusiastic attitude and willingness to contribute are obligatory :).

As we can’t expect everybody to be available and join the session, this session is not going to be part of the overall assessment.

Deadline for the Task 2 extended

Dear participants,

According to many requests we decided to take them into account and postpone the initial deadline. The deadline for the Task 2 is on Sunday, 10th of October, 24.00 (Estonian time). In general we follow a principle that weekends are for families and leisure activities and we don’t expect you to work on tasks during weekends, however, some of you have asked for an extension till Sunday. That’s why this time we have extended the deadline till Sunday. We are now more aware of your study schedule and we try to take this into account next time. Please note that we make an exception only this time.

Don’t forget that one of our aims was the attempt to simulate a real professional work setting with its deadlines (sometimes tight, sometimes more lose). We follow the logic that every now and then it is more important to get something done on time and with 70 % quality than waste extra days on a task and trying to provide 100% quality.

Have a nice day!

A reminder

I am glad to see that most of you have managed to set up a Weblog for this course. However, there are still some participants without a personal Weblog. At least I haven’t found them neither on the Wikiversity course page nor on the Edufeedr page. Having a Weblog in this course is necessary and obligatory. It might also be a case that you already have one, but you have forgotten to make it public. There is still a chance to add your Weblogs on the Wikiversity course page. If you encounter problems with setting up one, don’t hesitate to contact with the course facilitators.

Terje

Assessment page updated

Hi folks,

I put a first summary of our general scheme and procedure on the assessment page.

cheers,

Sebastian