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Here's the link to my current blog called The Notetaker...
http://www.personal.psu.edu/rsw136/blogs/the_note_taker/
http://www.personal.psu.edu/rsw136/blogs/the_note_taker/
Kevin wants to be a rock star! He would play
24/7 if his parents let him and has been playing for 2 ½ yrs. He entered this contest,
and he needs your vote. Please forward to your friends so they can vote too!
Kevin Somerville is a former student of mine (when he was in 6th grade) and is in a shredder contest on the Dean Guitars website. The more people that visit the site and vote for him, the better his chances are at winning! The grand prize is a new Dean guitar, a trip to Florida to a Dean Owners Convention and, best of all, a private lesson with a professional guitar player! It doesn’t cost you anything to do it, just click on the link, visit his video and, most of all, VOTE FOR KEVIN!!
Here is the link to his video on the site:
http://www.deanguitars.com/shredder/viewProfile.php?id=307
Click on the number line below the video to submit a score. You can only click once. (I learned the hard way.) Thank you so much for your support!
GO KEVIN!!! YOU'RE THE BEST!!!
Here I am...who should play me? You decide...
<a href="http://www.myheritage.com/collage" title="MyHeritage - free family trees, genealogy and face recognition" alt="MyHeritage - free family trees, genealogy and face recognition" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.myheritagefiles.com/K/storage/site1/files/75/10/52/751052_6945855dd6f38449ujcx45.JPG" width="500" height="574" border="0" ></a>
Design has been the last topic of discussion for us CI597Cers. My focus has primarily been consumed by identity and community, but as I turn my thoughts to this concept, I feel that the three are inextricably linked. I see design as the greatest catalyst, in that design impacts community creation, which in turn impacts identity construction.
In a post, Steve comments on design issues in teaching and learning, saying that curriculum should be constructed first and technology should be matched second. I wonder which one Cole and McEd considered first: curriculum or technology, when they designed the course. When I consider the design of our class, I believe that to some extent there was a method to their madness and to some extent their method evolved over time as a result of their madness. Brandon posted a thought on his blog regarding this topic when discussing Cole's intentions regarding the expanse of disruptive technologies through change agents, implying that we, as CI597Cers, might be such gatekeepers. Only time will tell if Cole is really Paul Revere.
My post entitled "Nobody Likes Me..." created some interesting dialogue on Pligg. I truly believe that this grand experiment was designed to investigate how the "design" of this course would impact the notions of community and identity both on a group and individual level. Using this class as a model, it confirms my theory regarding design as the instigator. Our personal designs for our own identities, communities, and lives and those designs we create for others in our communities and those who are members-in-waiting have an impact. To get philosophical (and possibly inspirational), we control our lives by how we design them and how we maneuver, negotiate, and interact with the designs others have created for us. Despite its importance, design can be taken for granted due to its invisible nature, yet design determines destiny. What is success? No matter how we define it, could we say that those who are "successful" have designed their lives in such a way to create success? Effort and careful attention needs to be paid to design in order to maximize the potential of success for those people whose lives we touch.
In a post, Steve comments on design issues in teaching and learning, saying that curriculum should be constructed first and technology should be matched second. I wonder which one Cole and McEd considered first: curriculum or technology, when they designed the course. When I consider the design of our class, I believe that to some extent there was a method to their madness and to some extent their method evolved over time as a result of their madness. Brandon posted a thought on his blog regarding this topic when discussing Cole's intentions regarding the expanse of disruptive technologies through change agents, implying that we, as CI597Cers, might be such gatekeepers. Only time will tell if Cole is really Paul Revere.
My post entitled "Nobody Likes Me..." created some interesting dialogue on Pligg. I truly believe that this grand experiment was designed to investigate how the "design" of this course would impact the notions of community and identity both on a group and individual level. Using this class as a model, it confirms my theory regarding design as the instigator. Our personal designs for our own identities, communities, and lives and those designs we create for others in our communities and those who are members-in-waiting have an impact. To get philosophical (and possibly inspirational), we control our lives by how we design them and how we maneuver, negotiate, and interact with the designs others have created for us. Despite its importance, design can be taken for granted due to its invisible nature, yet design determines destiny. What is success? No matter how we define it, could we say that those who are "successful" have designed their lives in such a way to create success? Effort and careful attention needs to be paid to design in order to maximize the potential of success for those people whose lives we touch.
Being a visual learner, McEd used an analogy to describe community that, no matter how hard I try to alter or disprove it, his analogy holds true for my definition of community. He described community as the creation of light from a flashlight on a wall. Please keep that picture in your mind as you continue to read this entry.
Initially I believed that a community entailed groups of people. While I maintain that stance, I have recently toiled with the idea of the individual nature of community. Let me explain...
Each of us belongs to many communities. Each community consists of groups of people who share a commonality be it beliefs, interests, or heritage. The individual's sense of belonging in the particular community is characterized by the individual's level of participation in a community. I believe that as one progresses across the binary continuum of participation, so too does the sense of belonging in the community. The level of involvement dictates the sense of belonging. Referring back to the flashlight image, the more one participates, the closer one gets to the center of the light. The more concentrated area of light equates to the sense of belonging, which is enforced by the level of participation.
In order to participate, we must communicate with the other members of the community. Our communication can be verbal and nonverbal, but we must communicate in order to participate. As a lurker or voyeur, we exist on the fringes of the light. Communication exists as the negotiation of our participation to the center or fringes of the light. In order to communicate, the community must have a common language. The podcast, Tweet Talk 1, raised some important ideas and questions. In particular, Minh's comments intrigued me. She raised the question of whether the discourse creates the community or the community creates the discourse. While the jury is still deliberating, I think that a mutuality exists where one influences, impacts, and alters the other. Either way, as the discourse is negotiated in the community, some aspects must be shared for survival. Often times, Darwinian aspects take hold and both the community and its discourse evolve.
Technology acts as another participation catalyst. In CI597C, we have been discussing different disruptive technologies. Donna's post, "Can't We All Just Belong," discusses this concept. Using Pligg, we CI597Cers and any other lurkers who are courageous enough to comment are able to tease out different ideas. My comment on Donna's post is still applicable today in that I think that it is the marriage of technology and individual that determines the participation of the couple. (Aside: In this way, I wonder to what extent technology impacts our identity...)
When we shine a flashlight, we value the brightest area of light to help us see. I have posed this question before, but I wonder to what extent the level of participation determines the value of that person's membership in the community. My thinking is that they are linked. The more someone participates in a community, the more we learn about their identity. We see their identity through our community's lens and construct decisions regarding that person's status in our perception of the community.
The comments thus far have been with regard to community in its pluralistic nature, but I believe that community has an individualistic component that is unique to its owner. If we refer the flashlight image again but instead think about the center and the fringe being composed of different communities rather than the individual, we can see that our individual community (the flashlight) is composed of the multitude of communities to which we belong, with the strongest communities in which we invest our energy in the center to those communities in which we just lurk on the edges to the dark areas containing communities to which we have yet to belong. The aforementioned theories of negotiation in the individual scenario are applicable here as well. The communities to which we belong are negotiated through our participation within them. They traverse to the center from the fringes and vice versa as we continue on the journey we call life. We are impacted by the stops we make and the sights we see on the trip and yet the trip will forever change us and define our identities.
Initially I believed that a community entailed groups of people. While I maintain that stance, I have recently toiled with the idea of the individual nature of community. Let me explain...
Each of us belongs to many communities. Each community consists of groups of people who share a commonality be it beliefs, interests, or heritage. The individual's sense of belonging in the particular community is characterized by the individual's level of participation in a community. I believe that as one progresses across the binary continuum of participation, so too does the sense of belonging in the community. The level of involvement dictates the sense of belonging. Referring back to the flashlight image, the more one participates, the closer one gets to the center of the light. The more concentrated area of light equates to the sense of belonging, which is enforced by the level of participation.
In order to participate, we must communicate with the other members of the community. Our communication can be verbal and nonverbal, but we must communicate in order to participate. As a lurker or voyeur, we exist on the fringes of the light. Communication exists as the negotiation of our participation to the center or fringes of the light. In order to communicate, the community must have a common language. The podcast, Tweet Talk 1, raised some important ideas and questions. In particular, Minh's comments intrigued me. She raised the question of whether the discourse creates the community or the community creates the discourse. While the jury is still deliberating, I think that a mutuality exists where one influences, impacts, and alters the other. Either way, as the discourse is negotiated in the community, some aspects must be shared for survival. Often times, Darwinian aspects take hold and both the community and its discourse evolve.
Technology acts as another participation catalyst. In CI597C, we have been discussing different disruptive technologies. Donna's post, "Can't We All Just Belong," discusses this concept. Using Pligg, we CI597Cers and any other lurkers who are courageous enough to comment are able to tease out different ideas. My comment on Donna's post is still applicable today in that I think that it is the marriage of technology and individual that determines the participation of the couple. (Aside: In this way, I wonder to what extent technology impacts our identity...)
When we shine a flashlight, we value the brightest area of light to help us see. I have posed this question before, but I wonder to what extent the level of participation determines the value of that person's membership in the community. My thinking is that they are linked. The more someone participates in a community, the more we learn about their identity. We see their identity through our community's lens and construct decisions regarding that person's status in our perception of the community.
The comments thus far have been with regard to community in its pluralistic nature, but I believe that community has an individualistic component that is unique to its owner. If we refer the flashlight image again but instead think about the center and the fringe being composed of different communities rather than the individual, we can see that our individual community (the flashlight) is composed of the multitude of communities to which we belong, with the strongest communities in which we invest our energy in the center to those communities in which we just lurk on the edges to the dark areas containing communities to which we have yet to belong. The aforementioned theories of negotiation in the individual scenario are applicable here as well. The communities to which we belong are negotiated through our participation within them. They traverse to the center from the fringes and vice versa as we continue on the journey we call life. We are impacted by the stops we make and the sights we see on the trip and yet the trip will forever change us and define our identities.
Over the semester, I have been refining my definition of identity. Similar to Twitter, which asks the question, "What are you doing?" to me, identity answers the question, "Who am I?" Luckily I don't have 140 characters or less to answer this question, but I did find one way of describing identity which might be short enough to define it in less than the required characters. In Betsy's entry To Be or Not to Be, she comments on identity as being our personal lens to the world. It reminded me of the glasses that Nicolas Cage finds and uses in National Treasure. His use of different lenses reveals different clues on the map. This thought implies that our identity is how we see ourselves in this world. It's our way of looking at the world. I want to expand upon this notion by defining on what I think creates that lens and ultimately shapes our identity.
First, I have been pondering about the purpose of a name and how important a name is in our identity. Minh's entry, On Identity, Community, Web 2.0, and the Design of Pligg, challenged me to articulate my thoughts on the purpose of a name. In this entry, she discusses her frustrations with Pligg regarding her inability to choose her name. Instead our Penn State identity becomes our name. Her passion challenged me to consider how names and the choice over names impacts our identity. In response to this entry, an interesting dialogue ensued on Pligg. For me, our names are what distinguishes us. In particular I take pride in my name even though I had no choice in its selection. My birth name represents my heritage. In fact when I married, I really struggled with losing my last name. After all, that name was how I defined myself for 25 years, and by taking on a new last name, I had the opportunity to create a "new" me. My link theory between names and identity was shattered one day in class when Doug raised a very philosophical question, which is similar to the adage, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Doug challenged my thinking when he raised the question, "If a man is alone in a desert, does he need a name?" His question required me to consider the link between identity and community. Considering these thoughts, I discussed my theory and Doug's question with McEd. McEducation affirmed my theory in that he commented on how we are our names. Providing me with a historical perspective, he commented on how originally people's names were related to characteristics that defined them including personality and occupation, hence the last name Smith, etc. Ultimately I still see our identities as being defined and communicated through our names sealing the important connection between identity and community.
John's entry, Identity is in the Eye of the Beholder, asks an intriguing question. He comments on this notion of perception when he asks, "Who decides on one's identity?" Identity is not just how we see ourselves; it's also how other people see us. Sometimes we select what we reveal to others and sometimes our revelations are accidental. Identity is inextricably linked to perception both internally and externally. Our identity is composed of our personal constructions of what we believe ourselves to be and how others perceive us to be. Sometimes those perceptions align, and sometimes they don't. It seems like our identity could be compared to a wiki - a page that is created, altered, and controlled by us and those who have access to us.
Mike cites some of Wenger's thoughts on identity in his post Finding Identity and Networking, same thing? He discusses how Wenger states that our identity is formed through identification and negotiation, and Mike poses the question of its relation to networking. Here again the notion of community intersects with identity. Our experiences inevitably shape who we are - our identity. To some extent some would argue that we have choice in those experiences. To answer his question, all members of the CI597C community will forever be changed by our experience and participation in this community. Access and participation in communities touch our lives and alter our identities both positively and negatively. CI597C has altered our identities - it has added and deleted content, some more than others, on our individual identity wiki pages.
In closing, Donna provides an intriguing visual of identity in her post "We're all Onions." Here she describes identity as an onion, layers of ourselves, which are altered by life's experiences. Whether we see ourselves as onions, wiki pages, or another analogy, our personal perceptions of ourselves and other's perceptions of us coupled with life's experiences shape our identity of which are combined and then attached to a label, our names, that act as our coat of arms in the world.
First, I have been pondering about the purpose of a name and how important a name is in our identity. Minh's entry, On Identity, Community, Web 2.0, and the Design of Pligg, challenged me to articulate my thoughts on the purpose of a name. In this entry, she discusses her frustrations with Pligg regarding her inability to choose her name. Instead our Penn State identity becomes our name. Her passion challenged me to consider how names and the choice over names impacts our identity. In response to this entry, an interesting dialogue ensued on Pligg. For me, our names are what distinguishes us. In particular I take pride in my name even though I had no choice in its selection. My birth name represents my heritage. In fact when I married, I really struggled with losing my last name. After all, that name was how I defined myself for 25 years, and by taking on a new last name, I had the opportunity to create a "new" me. My link theory between names and identity was shattered one day in class when Doug raised a very philosophical question, which is similar to the adage, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Doug challenged my thinking when he raised the question, "If a man is alone in a desert, does he need a name?" His question required me to consider the link between identity and community. Considering these thoughts, I discussed my theory and Doug's question with McEd. McEducation affirmed my theory in that he commented on how we are our names. Providing me with a historical perspective, he commented on how originally people's names were related to characteristics that defined them including personality and occupation, hence the last name Smith, etc. Ultimately I still see our identities as being defined and communicated through our names sealing the important connection between identity and community.
John's entry, Identity is in the Eye of the Beholder, asks an intriguing question. He comments on this notion of perception when he asks, "Who decides on one's identity?" Identity is not just how we see ourselves; it's also how other people see us. Sometimes we select what we reveal to others and sometimes our revelations are accidental. Identity is inextricably linked to perception both internally and externally. Our identity is composed of our personal constructions of what we believe ourselves to be and how others perceive us to be. Sometimes those perceptions align, and sometimes they don't. It seems like our identity could be compared to a wiki - a page that is created, altered, and controlled by us and those who have access to us.
Mike cites some of Wenger's thoughts on identity in his post Finding Identity and Networking, same thing? He discusses how Wenger states that our identity is formed through identification and negotiation, and Mike poses the question of its relation to networking. Here again the notion of community intersects with identity. Our experiences inevitably shape who we are - our identity. To some extent some would argue that we have choice in those experiences. To answer his question, all members of the CI597C community will forever be changed by our experience and participation in this community. Access and participation in communities touch our lives and alter our identities both positively and negatively. CI597C has altered our identities - it has added and deleted content, some more than others, on our individual identity wiki pages.
In closing, Donna provides an intriguing visual of identity in her post "We're all Onions." Here she describes identity as an onion, layers of ourselves, which are altered by life's experiences. Whether we see ourselves as onions, wiki pages, or another analogy, our personal perceptions of ourselves and other's perceptions of us coupled with life's experiences shape our identity of which are combined and then attached to a label, our names, that act as our coat of arms in the world.
As the days of CI597C come to an end, I started to think about our community that has been created over the last several weeks. For some of us, I think that the end of class could evoke some strong feelings. For others, the impact could be quite a different experience. I'm thinking that the strength of emotions parallels engagement in a community - the more engaged, the greater the feeling of belonging, the stronger the feelings are towards the community, and when the community changes or disintegrates, the greater the emotional feelings. Our physical meeting space will exist no more, but for some of us, the virtual component of the class will provide a forum for conversation and potential sustainability for some of our community. It will be interesting to see how the CI597C community evolves over time. Many of us have discussed the need for face-to-face contact at some point. A completely virtual environment would not be ideal for a course (for some of us). I wonder what the rules will be for our virtual community. Since this component has largely existed online, without the support of the physical contact, what will the impact be on our online environment?
I'm trying to tease out one of Wenger's many thoughts. In an attempt to decipher his cryptic code, I wondered if I could apply his thinking to a pop culture trend. Surgeon General's Warning: I may be going too far, so proceed only at your own risk...
Wenger discusses imagination and its role in creating community, not necessarily a community of practice, but rather a sense of community. If Wenger read this post, he might agree that my thoughts are a stretch just as applying his notion of imagination in creating communities of practice is, but I am going to try it anyway.
Wenger says that when watching a television show, we can imagine that there are numerous other viewers who are watching. Consequently we start to feel a sense of belonging. I wonder what Wenger would say to certain reality television shows and their impact on our imaginations. In particular, I am considering American Idol (AI). When you watch AI, you see the audience members. By physically seeing some of the fellow viewers (including stars sometimes), does that impact our imagination and consequently our sense of belonging? After all, it provides a visual image of those who tune in each week to watch the show. Moreover, each week the show also declares the number of votes cast during that particular week. That said, does that declaration also impact our imagination and our sense of belonging? Beyond the hundreds that we see in the audience, we hear that millions have voted, does that increase our sense of community?
Wenger discusses imagination and its role in creating community, not necessarily a community of practice, but rather a sense of community. If Wenger read this post, he might agree that my thoughts are a stretch just as applying his notion of imagination in creating communities of practice is, but I am going to try it anyway.
Wenger says that when watching a television show, we can imagine that there are numerous other viewers who are watching. Consequently we start to feel a sense of belonging. I wonder what Wenger would say to certain reality television shows and their impact on our imaginations. In particular, I am considering American Idol (AI). When you watch AI, you see the audience members. By physically seeing some of the fellow viewers (including stars sometimes), does that impact our imagination and consequently our sense of belonging? After all, it provides a visual image of those who tune in each week to watch the show. Moreover, each week the show also declares the number of votes cast during that particular week. That said, does that declaration also impact our imagination and our sense of belonging? Beyond the hundreds that we see in the audience, we hear that millions have voted, does that increase our sense of community?
