Ok - three definitions first.
NJ SLEDucator - Formal: One who belongs to the Second Life in-world group New Jersey Second Life Educators. Informal: Anyone who has an interest in Second Life and Education (Higher Ed or K-12) in New Jersey
UnConference - "An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference
MSU - Montclair State University :-)
Now, an explanation. Last spring (07) Laura Nicosia and I talked about having a summer "thing" where we got some folks together, informally, to talk about this new "thing" we found called Second Life, which we both loved and saw the potential for.
Fast forward nearly a year. Montclair becomes the first University to have a publicly available island in Second Life. Princeton makes a huge splash by opening a number of joined sims and Seton Hall has also joined the party with a space of their own. And a little "virtual" birdie tells me that the CHSS Island may soon be joined by some MSU neighbors (but that still hush hush, keep it under your hat).
I mentioned the idea of an 2008 summer thing to Gregg Festa, who thought it was a great idea and signed up to work on it with me. It was Gregg who suggested the idea of an "unconference". I liked the idea immediately and we were off and running.
Details will start to come together shortly, and hopefully we'll have the wiki up soon so folks can start signing up and contributing content. Until then, we need to pick a date.
The Conference Center in University Hall, here at MSU, is a wonderful facility run expertly by Phil Cardillo. It affords amazing views of the surrounding area (for miles!), and an especially exceptional view of Manhattan. So, the first NJ SLEDucator's UnConference will be held there (at least thats the current working name).
The May dates I originally picked were booked. I was trying for a Friday (since there are no classes at MSU on Fridays, so the parking a getting around would be easier), or one of the days between Spring Finals and the first Pre-Session. No such luck. The only three days available to us are listed in the poll to the right (5/19, 5/20, and 5/21). If you are planning on attending, thinking about attending, or even remotely interested in attending, please select one of those date or choose "Pick Another Date" and we'll look later in the summer.
More to come.
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Ask not what your community can do for you...
Social networking is big. Duh, right? That is what you might have just said to yourself.
“Duh, AJ, what rock have you been hiding under? Everyone knows social networking is big!”
What I’m suggesting though is, perhaps, social networking is bigger than just “big”, that perhaps it is historical. Clearly history will write a place for what is going on right now in that people are communicating in ways that have never been possible before. I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest this (and if you know an author I can read on this, leave info in the comments), but I’m saying that social networking is foundational; it is laying the groundwork for the next big social global historical shift.
Humans are using technology to make up for something that time had started to take away, social interaction. The role of community has not changed, where we are going for that community has. This is, of course, not to suggest that social interactions via technology are better or worse then those that take place face-to-face, it simply means that an easy and accessible tool for allowing interaction with a greater number of people, over a large stretch of space, has stepped in to fill a gap where local interaction seems to have started to fail.
When the world was tiny, all we had to worry about were those in our village, or maybe a select few from neighboring villages we visited from time to time. Our social network was small, but intense.
As modes of transportation and communication improved, we began to spread out our networks. At this point, we knew more people, but we didn’t know all of them as well as when the group was smaller.
Not that long ago, in a world that became bigger and yet smaller, with people we know spread out all over it, it became harder and harder to maintain the depth of intensity to most of our relationships with others. Add to this the increase in the use of technology, and our busy schedules, and people started to feel isolated and distant.
Recognizing that community is essential to nearly all facets of our lives, this new use of the very technology that was keeping us apart started to spring up. Now, we are talking about social technologies and many of the same people who were lamenting that technology is isolating and marginalizing the human race are now pooh-poohing the social networking technologies that are bringing us back together. One could argue that this revitalizing of community through technology is actually better than way back when we lived in small villages.
If we tried to look at depth of relationship (a staple of community) on a chart, over time, the depth would be higher when the number of people in our circle was smaller and they were in a closer proximity. That line on the graph would curve downward over time as our contacts increased and were located farther apart, geographically. Now, that line is curving back up again because, even though we have much larger circles of contacts than every in history before, and they are spread farther out than ever in history, our depth of relationship with these contacts is more intense because a) it is easier to stay in touch thanks to the Internet and, b) we are grouping off with more people who have similar interests to our own.
So, to me, it seems all about community. Certainly, as a community (in all the senses that can be defined), we can accomplish so much more than a single individual can. I propose a goal for each of us. Think of all the “communities” you are a part of: parent, child, spouse/partner, sibling, co-worker, worshipper, neighbor, fan, chief cook, bottle washer, whatever…. look at all these communities and know that we each have the power to make those communities better. Do just a little bit each day to make your communities better and the world could not help but be a better place. And THIS is why I’m dedicating myself to the issue of community. Its time to talk about this, to try and make sense of it, but its also time to act.
“Duh, AJ, what rock have you been hiding under? Everyone knows social networking is big!”
What I’m suggesting though is, perhaps, social networking is bigger than just “big”, that perhaps it is historical. Clearly history will write a place for what is going on right now in that people are communicating in ways that have never been possible before. I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest this (and if you know an author I can read on this, leave info in the comments), but I’m saying that social networking is foundational; it is laying the groundwork for the next big social global historical shift.
Humans are using technology to make up for something that time had started to take away, social interaction. The role of community has not changed, where we are going for that community has. This is, of course, not to suggest that social interactions via technology are better or worse then those that take place face-to-face, it simply means that an easy and accessible tool for allowing interaction with a greater number of people, over a large stretch of space, has stepped in to fill a gap where local interaction seems to have started to fail.
When the world was tiny, all we had to worry about were those in our village, or maybe a select few from neighboring villages we visited from time to time. Our social network was small, but intense.
As modes of transportation and communication improved, we began to spread out our networks. At this point, we knew more people, but we didn’t know all of them as well as when the group was smaller.
Not that long ago, in a world that became bigger and yet smaller, with people we know spread out all over it, it became harder and harder to maintain the depth of intensity to most of our relationships with others. Add to this the increase in the use of technology, and our busy schedules, and people started to feel isolated and distant.
Recognizing that community is essential to nearly all facets of our lives, this new use of the very technology that was keeping us apart started to spring up. Now, we are talking about social technologies and many of the same people who were lamenting that technology is isolating and marginalizing the human race are now pooh-poohing the social networking technologies that are bringing us back together. One could argue that this revitalizing of community through technology is actually better than way back when we lived in small villages.
If we tried to look at depth of relationship (a staple of community) on a chart, over time, the depth would be higher when the number of people in our circle was smaller and they were in a closer proximity. That line on the graph would curve downward over time as our contacts increased and were located farther apart, geographically. Now, that line is curving back up again because, even though we have much larger circles of contacts than every in history before, and they are spread farther out than ever in history, our depth of relationship with these contacts is more intense because a) it is easier to stay in touch thanks to the Internet and, b) we are grouping off with more people who have similar interests to our own.
So, to me, it seems all about community. Certainly, as a community (in all the senses that can be defined), we can accomplish so much more than a single individual can. I propose a goal for each of us. Think of all the “communities” you are a part of: parent, child, spouse/partner, sibling, co-worker, worshipper, neighbor, fan, chief cook, bottle washer, whatever…. look at all these communities and know that we each have the power to make those communities better. Do just a little bit each day to make your communities better and the world could not help but be a better place. And THIS is why I’m dedicating myself to the issue of community. Its time to talk about this, to try and make sense of it, but its also time to act.
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