Group items tagged

Clearly one of the challenges academia faces is to figure out a productive use of networks in terms of research practices. Usually I write more about the teaching aspects of the university and clearly there are many ways universities will employ networks. But I want to think specifically about the use of the web for research with a few goals in mind: to enhance collaboration between academics to publish and share research to share knowledge with a broader audience (students, governments, industries, non-profits, the general public, and so on) One might say that these have been answered, but the real challenge is that as the web continues to evolve and now converge with other networks, the practices we have established need to change as well. That is, from the inception of the web, one could find the appearance of academic journals: genuine, rigorously reviewed, academic scholarship available freely online. There were (and are) listservs that might facilitate collaboration. Similarly individual faculty and faculty organizations built websites where they offered information, policy statements, and so on (NCTE or MLA for example in English Studies). But how are we moving forward?

Conventional academic discourse lies with journals and conferences. For all the advantages of these modes, neither offers an ongoing, dynamic interchange. Listservs offer that, but, in my experience anyway, they don't really create a productive, collaborative space. Sometimes there are debates on listservs; sometimes there is sharing of information (e.g. does anyone know a good article about x"?). But there isn't a sustained building of knowledge there. I suppose there could be, but there isn't, probably b/c we all go off to write our individually authored articles and conference presentations. In any case, the listserv is too large a community for collaborative work. Yes, tens of thousands contribute to Wikipedia, but they don't all work on the same article, right? So I don't know what the magic number is, but let's say I was looking for a dozen scholars in who were interested in the same things I'm interested in: mobile networks virtual worlds audio/video production public, collaborative learning It's unlikely that we would all work on the same research project at once, but there would be a handful of project undertaken by individuals or small groups. There would be a public face to the group and a private project management site, like Basecamp. The public face would offer a steady stream of information as we shared what we were doing, what was going on in our teaching, what we were reading and writing. We'd be assembling streams of information from our blogs, twitters, flickr, YouTube, and so on--wherever we were post information. The result is a collection of information that is hopefully useful groundwork for more formal investigation and also a mechanism for fruitful collaboration between our classes.

Meanwhile, in a more private space we might be orchestrating collaborative classroom projects and sharing research, drafts, and other media: constructing our scholarly work. When it's complete, we publish it in traditional venues and republish it on our public site as well.

There are a few posts I’ve written here where I’ve mentioned the phenomenal bookmarking service call Diigo. It’s something I use all the time.

The folks at Diigo have pushed the envelope a little farther with something they’ve recently announced call WebSlides. The reasons for using such a service are numerous, but the one I see being used the most is for bloggers to highlight other sites. Another use is to create a presentation about your own blog for visitors to get to know about your place. It might be a nice addition to your sidebar or About page. A presentation is very simple to make. While in your Diigo account, you select the sites you want to include and save them to a list. You can then add an audio file for background music or narration if you like. Readers can adjust the speed at which they move from site to site. They can pause it or even click on the sites provided in a list at their own pace — all without having to create a Diigo account of their own. I’ve explained more in my own presentation, so click the button below and take it for a spin. (Btw, yes, that’s me narrating. )

I’m glad you took the time to drop a comment here. I really appreciate all that you guys do, and please know that you have a strong supporter of your service as I’ve talked about it a few times here and on my other blogs. Keep it up!

Diigo @ DEMOfall 07 - A True 3D Information App?

Diigo.com announced their re-launch today with an information network unlike any we have seen in  scope or capability. The new Diigo network being unveiled at DEMOfall 07 creates global communities around data, information, interests and knowledge. These new communities engage and connect people around the content they collect and use. Diigo is already one of the most useful bookmarking and research sites on the Web. The integration of Webslides and the power of "writing the Web" makes Diigo perhaps the Web's first truly 3 dimensional tool. I spoke with Diigo Co-Founder Maggie Tsai on Friday about their deep and groundbreaking vison. I covered Webslides a couple of weeks ago, but honestly did not envision the depth or scope of Diigo's potential. Maggie demonstrated the capability of a development nearly as complex and difficult to encapsulate as the semantic search engine's technology. The simple truth of Diigo combined with Webslides is that with continued refinements Diigo could well be the mega site imagined by many for Web 3.0. Diigo Plus Webslides Diigo users can create groups, lists, collaborative forums, do research, annotate or comment on pages and essentially build layers of data and knowledge atop any Web page. The concept of a multi-layered Web is difficult to grasp, but Maggie's team have begun to capture the power of what content-centric (their word my understanding) collaboration can do. "Writing" to the Web via sticky notes, annotations and highlighted elements combined with various collaborative elements is power for more than doing a research project. With the addition of Webslides - essentially an interactive, selective browser/player within a browser - Diigo provides a multifaceted platform for unbelievable collaboration and monetization potential. Diigo also unveiled another crucial element for "directing" data at users with their Webslides embeddable widget. This tool allows users to embed Webslides bookmark or RSS shows inside pages and blogs. These shows can be customized to express any number of topical or thematic blog posts, topical articles, product reviews, real estate offerings or just about anything one can imagine.

A Tall Order Diigo is certainly a fantastic individual or collaborative research tool, but inserting a platform like this into what we might call "the hub" (the center of what people do) of the Web has deeper implications. Bookmarking and social networking has seen massive appeal. The idea of wrapping users up in this core of data and knowledge has been touched upon by sites like Wikia, Digg, Stumble Upon, Facebook and many others in the various venues. All of these great sites gather content that is acted on and sometimes enhanced by users, but the data remains rather static or 2 dimensional for the user. Stumbled Upon comes closest to letting users "filter" the Web and its data but even there the great volume of information is lost or scattered with time. Diigo's methodology effectively turns Diigo into a Web within a Web of filtered, searchable and dynamic information.

shows a sequence of live web pages from a bookmark list with accompanying notes jeestirling

This is a unique service. It allows you to make a slideshow (with audio) of Web pages. This is really cool and useful for quick overviews of categories of websites as well as quick tutorials. danielcraig

Just like it says. bdunphy

Slides.Diigo.com - Slideshows in a Flash   Want to find an easy way to create slideshows? Then look no further than WebSlides. WebSlides is a Diigos innovation that helps you create useful slideshows. To create a slide show with WebSlides you simple bookmark the links of choice and put them in order by dragging and dropping. Once you have decided on the order of the links you can add audio, either music or narration. The next step is to simply press play and watch your slideshow. Your slideshow will have a unique URL that you can email to friends or post on your webpage or profile page. There is also a highlighting and commenting feature which allows you and others to comment on your slideshow. Click on the Diigo icon to add sticky notes, then others can comment on your notes. If you prefer to keep your notes private, you have that option and you will be the only one to see your comments. Create an interesting slideshow to share with friends.

Why it might be a killer     WebSlides is very easy to use, choosing the order of your bookmarked links by dragging and dropping is great because everyone, no matter how technologically challenged, can handle that. Since your slideshow has a unique URL address it is also easy for you to share you slide show with others. WebSlides can be used by people of al ages and professions, from teenagers trying to spice up their profile page to artists displaying their portfolio.

So we built Make a Path to do what WebSlides does. It’s pretty cool. Sequence web pages, and then add annotations and even audio. Loads of applications for this tool. I’d like the navigation showed thumbnails of each site, though so I could skip around if I wanted.

Diigo Introduces WebSlides Sep 6th, 2007 by moultriecreek The folks at Diigo have been busy adding new features to their research-friendly bookmark platform. Today they introduced WebSlides which allows users to select a group of bookmarks, arrange them in a specific order and turn them into a slideshow. What is really cool about this is viewers are looking at a show of live sites - not screenshots. Slideshow creators can include background music - or even narration - to the show although trying to keep the audio and video synched is a stretch. WebSlides is still in beta, but you can view several sample slideshows to get a feel for the system. One of them is even about genealogy.

Wow is not a good enough word for this! lol I enjoyed your WebSlide presentation…. Janice

It was a lovely presentation, indeed! And thank you for featuring my little home town’s website as an example; I got TONS of people stopping by and taking a look. Much appreciated!

webslides from diigo - slideshows of bookmarked pages September 7th, 2007 · No Comments Webslides is a useful add-on feature from what I already consider to be the premier social bookmarking device on the web - diigo. This feaure allows you to create a slide show from your bookmarks so they become more interesting and you can highlight what you want. This lets you convey a series of points quickly and gives rise to an overall effect. Kind of like the difference between a picture and a group of pictures that run together to make a short movie. Each frame is meaningful, but in the aggregate they gain much, much more meaning and impact. Okay, enough about that. Just try it and see if you agree.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with diigo, it’s a collaborative bookmarking tool available for free on the web. It fits in and becomes part of your browser so you can capture information of any kind (words, audio, video, URLs, etc.) while browsing, doing research, etc. So far I’ve just described bookmarking, which we’ve all been doing that since Internet Explorer and Netscape were duking it out in 1995. So what’s the difference? The twist is diigo (like many competing services such as del.icio.us, furl, spurl, Yahoo!, Windows Live, and others) makes your bookmarks available to all other users of the service, while doing the same for you. Instant sharing. Of course you can also restrict your bookmarks to a particular group or keep them to yourself. But where’s the fun in that?

I maintain a few groups on diigo myself on topics such as legal technology, real property law, the current mortgage meltdown, divorce, immigration … you get the idea. You can check out my diigo groups and join them yourself (yes, I’m encouraging you to do so) by going to http://groups.diigo.com/. As always, thank you for your support.

WebSlides - Transforms Bookmarks Once Again  Annotated New feature from Diigo (currently in private beta testing): create a slideshow of links with highlighting and sticky notes. You can record audio or add music to accompany it. I could see this having potential for basic tutorials or demos; you could do this instead of using screencast or recording software.