Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Tsukuba University Kokai Koza. Our goals this
morning include several things, and I sincerely hope you'll find our discussion and workshop useful.
With no further ado, our goals:
- To discuss (briefly) the theoretical underpinnings of this sort of activity;
- To become familiar with some of the myriad things available, and
- To co-construct a demonstration webpage.
Theory behind the Madness
Here is the worksheet on digital devices from class. As you know, you will not hand it in in our next class (but you will hand it in a week or two later).
Having considered your personal Internet lifestyle, perhaps you noted some positive points. One of the most eloquent advocates of the benefits of the cybersphere is Clay Shirky, who penned an essay in 2010 titled The Internet makes us smarter (Shirky, 2010).
On the other hand, a fair number of people maintain that the Internet is not beneficial, instead causing considerable harm to users. Among those folks is Nicholas Carr, whose 2010 essay asserts that the Internet makes us dumber (Carr, 2010).
A small challenge for you, good people: how about giving up your cell phone and all of your other electronic devices for 90 days? One young man that did is Jake Reilly, featured in this interview and in the video below.
In a recent article Nancy McCormack (2010) addressed the question of whether
"Are e-books making us stupid". Specifically, she looked closely at what might become of
libraries as we move increasingly toward reading
e-books instead of paper books. The
abstract is here
Abstract
In 2008, Nicholas Carr published a provocative article titled Is Google making us stupid? in which he
ponders the effect of the internet and electronic sources generally on the brain. This paper discusses one
source specifically, e-books, and explores whether libraries are acting wisely by moving from print to electronic
book collections. The topic is considered from the vantage point of the library and from that of the
patron. Specifically, the prospect of an all or largely all e-book future is considered and whether that future
means an end to traditional library collections and services. The potential problems for gdeep readingh are
also considered, and, specifically, whether e-books can serve as an adequate substitute for patrons who will
no longer be able to use electronic collections in the way they once used print. In short, this paper explores
whether e-books are making us librarians and patrons stupid.
(mouseover to read it); contact me if you're interested in readng the entire
article.
2. Bells and Whistles (and Embedded Toys)
Quickly now, who can tell me what html stands for?
This question gets at the heart of what makes the Internet such a wonderful, rich environment: the ability to link to other things. Of course, those things can include ... .
Let's pause for a moment in honor of Douglas Engelbart, who recently passed away at the age of 88. As you'll see in this video, he gave us a certain piece of ubiquitous hardware.
3. Establishing a Telepresence
An interesting albeit slightly dated look at the phenomenon
of being a cyber-citizen is this article by Schau and Gilly (2003) titled
"We are what we post? Self-presentation in person web space"
[abstract
Abstract
This article examines personal Web sites as a conspicuous form of consumer selfpresentation.
Using theories of self-presentation, possessions, and computer-mediated
environments (CMEs), we investigate the ways in which consumers construct
identities by digitally associating themselves with signs, symbols, material objects,
and places. Specifically, the issues of interest include why consumers create personal
Web sites, what consumers want to communicate, what strategies they devise to
achieve their goal of self-presentation, and how those Web space strategies compare
to the self-presentation strategies of real life (RL). The data reveal insights into the
strategies behind constructing a digital self, projecting a digital likeness, digitally
associating as a new form of possession, and reorganizing linear narrative structures.
]. It's an interesting read if you're inclined, and I'd be happy to send it to you.
Following are some options for building your very own website.
1. Of course, you can simply purchase a domain and develop your own website. Here's one strange example.
2. You can also go the free route and simply find a host for your website. A couple examples are Google Sites and Webs.com.
3. OK, raise your hand if you're a Zuckerberg fan. Yes, I'm referring to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, which is certainly a possibility and will win you "cool" points with your students.
4. Finally, there are also quite a few group-oriented websites that, if you can believe it, cater to groups (wow). A good friend swears by Group Spaces, and here is a one of his classes. Another is from the ubiquitous Google toolbox and is cleverly termed Google Groups. Remember the Yahoo people? Well, they're still around and actually doing some very fine work. In the group arena they offer Yahoo Groups.
4. Software for Developing Webpages
Here with find the workhorses, those trusty programs that actually allow us to program our webpages. Note that you can approach this in two ways: code-it-yourself or WYSIWYG. I happen to prefer the former so that I have more control over the webpage, but the latter is - of course - easier. (Yes, that's a working bear in the photo, just in case you were wondering.)
My favorite, the Komodo folks.
Again from the Firefox people we get their contribution, which is called Firebug.
One that has been around a long time and is still very good, this freebie is from the Coffee Cup folks. (Note that this is available for free or as a paid version with more features.)
I would be remiss if I didn't mention one that has long been considered
one of the best (if not
If you need more ideas, here is quite a list of editing software.
5. FTP: From Your Desk to the Cloud
This section includes the Transporter, the handy-dandy
programs that transport files to and from the Cloud. When I do so for my own website,
I use the Java aplet through my provider, Host Monster. (Go
ahead, agree that that is a very cool name!)
A second one is Filezilla, which I've used once or twice in a pinch.
Yet another good one is the Firefox plug-in called FireFTP.
6. More Ideas ...
You really should consider a couple other activities that can be easily accomplished with webpage-like applications. The first (and perhaps the most interesting and enjoyable) is making maps using Google Maps. Here is a page of maps that my students developed. These were, as you'll see, related to our overall theme of mysteries, and each group of four students had to make a map related to a detective of their choosing.
Here is an older page of maps from my students.
The second is blogging, which now comes in all different shades from traditional blogging to the various micro-blogs like Twitter and Line. I hereby confess that I have never used either one, nor do I plan to (perhaps I'm a Luddite!). However, I have done a bit of blogging e .
My blogging host of choice is WordPress, which I've found easy for both my students and me to use. Here is one example from my English S class a few years ago. This was quite a fun project in which my students (Japanese students studying English) were exchanging blog comments with students (English students studying Japanese) at the University of Arizona in the US.
This next link is just for your consideration. In years past I taught a course here at Tsukuba called English and Crosscultural Awareness in which students had to devise and conduct small research projects in groups with four members. Each group had to report the results of its research in three ways: in a written report, in an oral presentation for their classmates, and via some type of Internet report. Although the quality varies, I suspect you'll find some interesting ideas here.
7. When Confused
As you might expect, there are times when you just don't know how to proceed or how to fix something that is broken. Of course, many people pull out a book or some such traditional thing, but you might consider just googling your question or even YouTubing it. Something you can do is add a search link on your webpage - see below!
8. The Fine Print (aka, "Legal things")
Nothing really clever to add here, but consider this a caveat: with my students, at times I have to remind them that data on the information are free to use. If you use something, make sure to honor the "fair usage" idea, which is simply "Give credit where credit is due." An example, good people: Where might I have found the code for that nifty Google search box just above? Let's take a look at the html code for this page ... (how, you ask? Of course, just press Control + U)
That is a very handy way to look at and get ideas for html code, by the way, but make sure to give credit when appropriate.
This naturally is true for images, videos, and so forth.
Riddles, Mysteries, and More
Treverton (2007) Risks and riddles
As you'll know from our class discussion, riddles at times give rise to conspiracy theories, some of which have remarkable longevity. Click here for quite a list of conspiracies (with photos), courtesy of the good people at The Telegraph.
Immediately below is a video clip of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (with his dog, Paddy) speaking about both Sherlock Holmes and his belief in spiritualism.
Writing
As you know from class, I require polite email. Recall, too, that if you send me a file, the filename has a certain form.
Here's an example of the report style that you should use.