iLearner on CCK08

Filter then publish? or Publish then filter!

I just finished reading “Here comes everybody”,  by Clay Shirky. About the impact on society of networked communication-tools. It’s easy, entertaining readings and  it’s presenting many examples and good stories from real, networked life.

One of his points related to my cck08-course has to do with publishing online. In the context from before internet-publishing it was a difficult, expensive task to publish your thoughts. Your material had to go through different reviews before it might end at a professional editors desk, and it was then up to him to edit, turn down or print. Your work was filtered before anyone would get access to it. Filter, then publish!

In the times with online-publishing tools for everybody, you don’t have to wait for others to approve your work before you publish. It’s the opposite way round: publish, - then filter.

I do too much filtering of my work ( at least I feel so, but this one went through. I have  many ideas and thoughts when I wake up in the morning, but they are caught by the filter before noon and never published. But who will point fingers at you if you write something half-finished inanities?

The logic of publish-then-filter means that new social systems have to tolerate enormous amounts of failure. The only way to uncover and promote the rare successes is to rely, yet again, on social structure supported by social tools.  Clay Shirky, Here comes everybody, p. 233

He says: “Failure for free”. How does that work in this online course?

Well, this is another meta-post, talking around the subject of the week. I have to get into it very soon! But remember: perfect is the enemy of getting things done.

/j

The good: I managed to attend the session on Elluminate today. The bad: A flue forced me to stay away from ITU-course in Copenhagen.

I have heard the name Valdis Krebs in connection to network. But I have never read or seen anything that he made. A couple of weeks ago I tryed to learn to use program for analysing  network, especially Social Network. Pajek and UCINET  were the tools we used. It very interesting, and difficult, but I’m still turned on. It’s very fascinating to draw the diagrams and discover some sort of meaning out of very simple data.

I think the point that Valdis Krebs presented near the end of his talk: the drawings are very good as an introduction to conversations about networks. What can we understand about our business, costumers, schoolclass by viewing the network maps? It’s not “the truth” about a network!

George Siemens asked Valdis about a special picture that he thought might be a picture of cck08-course-network. The one with a dense center with many paticipants and connections, 60% of participant very spread.  And he was a little concerned about the value of this kind of network.

And that’s a central subject of SNA, to evaluate the value of networks, connections. And how do you do hat properly? I think that its important to ad more information about the network, than what the networkdiagram tells.

How do we evaluate the value of a network?

Is it a problem that many participants only have  loose connections? I am working on getting ‘more connected’, and its an ongoing proces, but more difficult than expected.

/j