Feb 02 - Introduction

Greetings

Course Introduction - what does sharing have to do with survival and citizenship?

Inquiry blog - topics and lenses

Pecha Kucha

Feb 09 - Blogorama

Workshop:

The language of blogging - by Reporters Without Borders
Guide to Anonymous Blogging - by Ethan Zuckerman
Setting up your blog on Tumblr.
http://www.tumblr.com/themes

Consume:

list of blogs
the show with zefrank

DUE today:

Turn in a 1-page brainstorm for your blog project. It should include:

Generate at least 3 possible names for the blog.
Identify the topic of your inquiry and at least 2 and no more than 4 lenses through which you will examine your topic. Spend some time thinking about this. You will be asked to make at least one post on your blog every week of the semester… so choose things that you are interested in learning and care about so that you don't get bored. The point here is NOT to recreate what you are already doing on MySpace, Facebook, etc. - so topics can't include things like what you did with your friends last Saturday night…
Research and identify at least 3 other blogs that deal with similar material. They don't have to agree with you (in fact it would be more interesting if they didn't) but the things they write about should be fairly obviously related to some of the things you plan on writing about. The point here is to find some "massive conversations" that are happening online and join them. Briefly describe each one.

Readings:

We Media. Chapter 1: Introduction to participatory journalism by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis [pdf]
A Definition of Sociable Media by Judith Donath [pdf]

Feb 16 - Citizens journalism

Workshop:
Extending your blog skills: commenting, link equity, search engine optimization (SEO)
Links:

http://google.com/reader
http://www.tumblr.com/goodies - call in audio, Facebook, Twitter, apps

DUE today:

create your blog at http://tumblr.com
write your 1st post entitled "Hello, world!" - introduce your blog to the world - indicate the topic(s) and lenses you will be dealing with
your 2nd post - this is your first "real" post after the intro
email me your blog URL

Readings:

Introduction, The Assault on Reason by Al Gore [pdf]
WikiLeaks, Revolution, and the Lost Cojones of American Journalism by Naomi Wolf [pdf]
Spotlight Again Falls on Web Tools and Change by Scott Shane [pdf]
Egypt: Too soon to analyze - post by Ethan Zuckerman

Additional resource:
Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents [pdf]

Attachment	Size
scott-shane_spotlight-again-falls-on-web-tools-and-change.pdf	106.35 KB
naomi-wolf_wikileaks-revolution-lost-cojones-american-journalism.pdf	186.03 KB
al-gore_assault-on-reason-ch1.pdf	1.72 MB

Feb 23 - The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted

Workshop:
Twitter demo - learn how to tweet
Watch: Egypt: Seeds of Change on People & Power (Al Jazeera)
DUE today:
Now that you've planted your blog, grow it:

start "following" related blogs and "track" some tags
comment on at least 2 other blogs
weeding: install Disqus - try to respond to comments in a timely manner, watch out for spam
continue to write at least 1 post per week + experiment with promotion: post a comments on other blogs about your content, email your blog to friends and family, ask for other people to give you a boost
create a blog roll
experiment with another form of media: add images, audio or video

Readings:

Mar 02 - Your privately public self

Workshop:
Extending your digital self:

http://secondlife.com
- http://secondlife.com/support/quickstart/basic
- http://secondlife.com/my/whatnext/basics/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b72CvvMuD6Q - Intro to SL
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQL8_HB1HtQ - Suzanne Vega's guitar
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KruzH82Z2qQ - Architecture in SL
- http://tonightlivewithpaisleybeebe.com/2011/01/28/new-hbo-documentary-in… - Bara Johnson in SL
- http://www.hbo.com/#/documentaries/when-strangers-click
http://twitter.com
http://linkedin.com
http://flickr.com
http://delicious.com
http://stumbleupon.com
http://soundcloud.com

DUE today:

Immerse yourself in Twitter - email me your Twitter handle
Weekly blog post

Readings:

"Blogging Outloud: Shifts in Public Voice" by danah boyd
"Privacy, Publicity, and Visibility" by danah boyd
Thomas Vander Wal's definition of folksonomy.
Clay Shirky discusses folksonomy.

Mar 09 - Gift Economy + Open Source

Workshop: Hacking

DUE today:
Continue your weekly blog posts/tweets etc.

Your private public self - part one - start crafting your new identities:
Register at http://secondlife.com.
Choose a name.
Get Dressed (create your avatar).
Learn how to fly.

Register at http://delicious.com
Choose a name.
Start bookmarking socially.

Readings:

Pekka Himanen, "The Academy and the Monastery" [PDF]

Mar 23 - Your Social Graph

Discussion:
Social networks have been the focus of much recent research and entrepreneurship. This discourse views social relationships as nodes and links (or ties). Nodes are individual entities (often people) and the links are the relationships between them (parent-child, student-teacher, friend-friend). The people you know are your social network. Social relationships can be characterized on a spectrum from shallow to deep. Some theorists claim that social networks with many weak ties are more valuable than ones with fewer and deeper ties. The premise is that the more connections you have, the more likely that new ideas and opportunities will be introduced to you. This seems to be the guiding principle of many of these new social networking websites. Deeper connections have greater costs in terms of time commitments, etc and tend to have redundant ties. Of particular value in these systems are nodes (people, entities) that can bridge two networks thereby brokering relationships between networks that otherwise are not directly linked.

In 1967, Stanley Milgram made the famous "small world experiment" which claimed to prove that people in the world are separated by at most 6 links. While the experiment is considered to have many flaws, the notion of six degrees of separation has persisted in popular culture.

Social network class notes

DUE:

Privately Public Self Essay

Readings:

Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites. by danah boyd

The Rhythms of Salience: A Conversation Map by Judith Donath