Digital Ethnography

So I was wrong, as I often am, there is an updated site and the next Vasetz Reunion is June27-29. Sorry, this story has fascinated me since I was a reporter out there.

Digest of larger post of big study by International Telecommunication Union about mobile broadband use...

This is report does provide a sense of how mobile broadband is spreading globally. However, I wonder if this is necessarily a "good" thing. Sure, we could argue that eventually the spread of these technologies will happen, but is the source censored or monitored in any way? Is it available to "all" without loss of content or as a democratic platform for those in marginal communities?

danah boyd is a scholar whose work examines technology, society, and policy. She has produced a lot of great research on the ways in which young people engage in new media. I've recently become aware that she offers a free download of her new book "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens" on her personal website. I encourage all of you to give it a read if you have time. 

Neighborland is a way for residents to collaborate with local organizations and take action on important issues. It's free for residents to share their ideas and insights with organizations.

An organization that uses an internet platform to assist planning agencies and consultants in allowing citizens to participate in decision-making efforts.

This is a very handy transcription tool if you find yourself typing the same words over and over again. It allows you to create sort cuts and abbreviations that your computer will then expand into the real word. It's a nice time saver and its free.

TiA comes from the UCSB linguistics department, and is two tools. "VoiceWalker" is a transcription tool that "walks" through the transcription, that is, it repeats a segment of the transcription a certain number of times before moving on to the next segment. This prevents the constant stopping and starting that one has to do. The second tool is "SoundWriter" and it is still in Beta test form. The idea is that when you click on a section of the transcription, you'll be able to hear the original audio, so you can hear someones intonation.

This is the last of the tools that I talked about last week. Scripto is a community transcripting tool--should anyone have need of one--and works with both large and small groups. There is also the option to keep the community private.

For those of us looking for free cloud transcription service! Here's a great review from a KUOW Reporter.... "Register at http://www.voicebase.com, upload your audio, do something else for 10 minutes to an hour or two (the wait varies apparently), and it will do a rough but surprisingly not-bad transcription for you. What I've done is then paste that "machine transcript" into a Word doc (or you can download it) and correct major errors in it as I listen to my original audio. Much faster (and a lot less typing) than trying to log tape from scratch. Voicebase.com lets you do 50 hours of audio transcribing free. I did it for a half-hour interview I'd taped in the studio; I don't know how Voicebase will perform on phone tape, audio with ambient noise behind it, speakers with accents, interviews with more than one person, etc. But for my purposes, it was pretty freaking awesome."

Interesting poster from an EdD Candidate looking at "hypermedia ethnography" in a 2009 conference. Abstract appears alongside the Flickr image...

You can find the information for the Nina Simon Lecture on May 22 here...Come see the incredible Nina Simon, Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & Historyand Museum 2.0 and The Participatory Museum blogger, talk about what she is doing to make art museums more participatory. Learn from a leader in the field of audience engagement and participatory arts, and be inspired to be your own emerging leader! 

First "issue" to launch Sept. 1. Some ethnographic films available on site currently.

Attached is the ePals site: http://www.epals.com/challenges/folklife2014/?UA-49242919-1/Education

A project that is placing transmedia tools in the hands of New York youth in an effort to empower.

For those interesting in online communities, gaming or otherwise, you may find this article and the related book interesting.