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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.

If you’re one of the expanding list of genealogy bloggers, chances are good you frequently find things online you’d like to write about. In addition to copying the quote, you also need to grab the site’s name, article/page title and link. Diigo, my favorite online research tool, can help make this process a whole lot easier. Diigo’s “Blog This” function builds on its highlighting and annotation features to make it easy to capture information and incorporate it into a blog post. The feature works with WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Moveable Type, Windows Live Spaces and Drupal blog platforms. Here’s how it works . . . Setup The first step is to set up your blog so Diigo can access it. Log into Diigo then click on My Tools. Now click on Blog This in the left column. When that page appears, click on the +Add a new blog link. Enter the address of your blog in the URL field, then click Next. Now enter the username and password you use to to access your blog and click Add New Blog. Your blog should now appear on your Blog This page. You’re ready to start blogging. Blog This As you browse the web, you come across a tidbit you’d like to write about. Highlight the text you’d like to include in your post, right-click and choose Diigo > Blog This from the popup menu.

In the example shown here (configured for a WordPress blog), you can see in the left column that this post is going to my Family Matters blog as a draft in the News category. What you actually see will depend on what blog platform you are using. I may post a “quick and dirty” item directly from the Diigo editor, but generally I will send the highlighted text to my blog as a post and finish it off there. Either way, Diigo has made it easy for me to include web content in my posts - saving both time and effort.

Level 4: Individual, Networked, Social Interaction with Content (Me to We with Museum) This is the level where web 2.0 sits. Individuals still do their interacting with the content singly, but their interactions are available for comment and connection by other users. And the architecture promotes these connections automatically. For example, on Netflix, when you rate a movie highly, you don’t just see how others have rated it; Netflix recommends other movies to you based on what like-minded viewers also rated highly. By networking the ratings, tags, or comments individuals place on content, individuals are linked to each other and form relationships around the content. A successful level 4 experience uses social interaction to enhance the individual experience; it gets better the more people use it. The social component is a natural extension of the individual actions. Which means, perhaps, users are ready for…

As always, comments are encouraged—and in this case, strongly desired as I work on refining this content for the article.

using web 2.0 to promote civic discourse in museums, I’m developing an argument about the “hierarchy of social participation.” I believe that, as with basic human needs, experience design in museums (and for other content platforms) can occur on many levels, and that it is hard to achieve the highest level without satisfying, or at least understanding, those that come before it. One of the impediments to discourse in museums is that fact that designers want to jump straight from individuals interacting with content to interacting with each other. It’s a tall order to get strangers to talk to each other, let alone have a meaningful discussion. And so, I offer the following hierarchy of social participation.