Keywords to define

Keywords to define

Social network - is a social structure made up of individuals or groups of individuals who are connected by a common interest, relationship or other aspect of their personal or business life. The relationships within a social network can be strong or conducted on an acquaintance basis.

Professional Development - The process of improving the knowledge of employees in a professional capability so they are more able to provide quality goods or services in their field of business or expertise. This can include on-the-job training, outside training, or observation of the work of others.
Ref.
erc.msh.org/staticpages_printerfriendly/2.2.3_gmt_English_.htm

Web 2.0 - The term "Web 2.0" are web applications which provide interactive information sharing, online collaboration, where the user has the ability to create and design on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. Users can interact and change website contents when using at site that has Web 2.0 applications.
ref
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

blog - A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.
Ref
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/

micro blog - is a brief message, it can be, a thought, important information, a URL, a photo or an audio clip.

wiki - A Web site that enables collaborative work, it allows many authors to work together to create content. A wiki permits users to not only access a Web site, but to edit, delete or modify the content that has been placed there. This means users are able to change the work of previous authors.
Ref
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/wiki.html

mashup - In web development, a mashup is the creation of a new web service that has been created from the integration of two or more sources of functionality or data. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs (An application programming interface) and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data.
Ref
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)

CIO Recommendations

 This entry is from Yellow Pods wiki http://yellowpod.wikispaces.com/message/list/home

While Facebook does provide a social forum that could be used for professional development, we believe that Moodle provides the best forum for professional development at this stage. Moodle provides an effective way to manage a course it;
• allows access to world-wide information with management control.
• can build in almost any kind of web content into the course, this includes video, podcasts and audio
• has multipage lessons
• is able to link webpages, text documents, glossaries
• provides opportunity for real time chat and video conferencing
• has the ability to make quizzes with built-in solutions.
• has a wiki

Moodle has developed a reputation as a risk free, easy to use way of managing a course.

2. We also recommend the use of Twitter be adopted by the company as an adjunct to Moodle. It can be used to give employees directions or URLs that will provide additional PD as required.

POD Group relections

I enjoyed our POD discussions, but I do think they were limited in content because everyone is busy and short of time. 

We used Ning for our discussions, which was largely due to Diana Briscoe setting it up, but it worked well so we stayed with it.  I suppose you could say its usability levels are high because we happily stuck to it and had no issues with it for the purposes of discussion. 

The wiki was also used for the joint construction of keyword definitions.

Our Ning discussions are at http://yellowpod.ning.com/forum 
Our Wiki is http://yellowpod.wikispaces.com/message/list/home

10.1 Complexity and Social Networks

Yellow Pods Social Network

a)      Peta – following b,c,d,e,f plus one other

b)     Jessica – following a,d,e,f plus many others

c)      Lloyd – following a,b,d,f

d)     Thomas – a,b,c

e)      Dianne – unable to identify

f)       Ash – following a,b,c,d plus one other

 

Over the last couple of weeks I have been have been following a few extra people from time to time, really just to check if we are understanding the questions/tasks the same way.  I have noticed that others seem to be doing the same.  Also to be totally honest I have made sure I have followed my pod mates to show that I am a diligent blogger, I presume others have been doing the same thing too. The social network diagram gives the impression that we are all following each other, but this is not so, to give better information each member of the pod should be given their own colour, then it will look like this.

 It can be seen in the above diagram that some of our group have a greater need or desire to follow other members' blogs than others.  This shows the dynamics could change greatly if a follower moved on or a new follower came in.  I have also noticed that it has been rare that people have commented on others, blogs.  I wonder if this is normal behaviour or if it is because of the purpose for which we are using our blogs.  I admit I have read some blogs and I have thought "I don't really agree", or "that's an interesting perspective",but I haven't commented, whereas I probably would in another environment.

If I repeated this activity with another Pod group, my observations could be quite different.   The reason for this is that a social network, like our Pod blogs are complex systems and they display emergent properties.  Jennifer Hallinan explains, these are ‘due to the interactions in a system, and are not inherent in the individual components.

According to the University of Michigan's Centre for the Study of Complex Systems, a complex system displays some or all of the following characteristics and they can be used to explain why we could expect different levels of activity and interaction throughout the various pod groups:

• Agent-based
• Basic building blocks are the characteristics and activities of individual agents – our Pods are made up of individuals, with different levels of confidence, enthusiasm and desire to share.
• Heterogeneous
• The agents differ in important characteristics.  The participants in our Pod groups are diverse and not necessarily comparable in the levels of participation in their allocated group.
• Dynamic
• Characteristics change over time, usually in a nonlinear way; adaptation.  Our Pod groups have changed over time, with some members dropping out, other members have participating on a very casual bases in the beginning, but towards the due assessment force is applied from the assessment deadline and perhaps other members of the group to participate.
• Feedback
• Changes are often the result of feedback from the environment.  Feedback can have considerable effect on the Pod system, there will be pods that have given each other more feedback and support which may have either pulled the group together or divided it.  It just depends on the type of feedback and how it has been accepted.
• Organization
• Agents are organized into groups or hierarchies.  Our groups were formed by Ken and we were expected to work together. This was done randomly and it depended on the dynamics of the group if there was someone to lead the group by arranging and setting up meeting places and leading group discussions.  No doubt some leaders were more active and motivated than others.
• Emergence
• Macro-level behaviours that emerge from agent actions and interactions.  The Pod groups have potential to cover a large scope of sharing and discussion, with few rules, in fact most rule have probable been unspoken.

http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~comp4001/

9.2 Research and evaluation in Government

A Wiki can be used as a place on the Internet where a government department can invite interested parties to contribute to a discussion paper on any issue of concern, e.g. The establishment of an Environmental Management Plan for a local riparian area or Development of child protection guidelines. The ‘open editing’ format allows anyone interested in the topic to make contributions to the document and edit/delete any previous comments. A wiki provides the opportunity for interested people from all areas of public life to seriously present their arguments on public policy. It can be accepted or rejected by others. All contributions are stored as data and can be referred to even if they have been edited by another person. A wiki provides policy makers with a draft and all proposals that have been contributed to assist them in preparing a policy that has been actively debated in a public domain.

Twitter in government is common place many politicians are using it to provide constituents with snippets of information or links to sites where they can find details on issues. Government departments could offer a service of answering quick question at set times. E.g. Centrelink could offer Monday 2nd November 1pm – 3pm tweet your questions about ‘rent assistance’.

Me as a supporter of Government 2.0
I do support Gov 2.0. At first I could only think of chaos when imagining the mining companies versus the greens and all the rest of us who have opinions completing a Wiki draft on ‘clean energy’. I had a vision of it being like ebay, where the last one to hit the enter button at close off is the winner. Then I thought about all the data the policy makers would have collected from contributors all over the country/world that they could use to write the policy document and then I felt calmer. I also read a great comment made by Matt Barton who really bought the whole use of wikis into perspective, he states, ‘they …enable collaboration and teach us all something very important about what a true democracy is all about’. His comments can be read at the following link.
http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki/Advantages_and_disadvantages

Twitter is happening. As the IT illiterates, who don’t want to get involved with Web 2.0 (or aren’t encouraged to by management) retire from government and the public service and those with the skills or willingness to participate and learn step up to the plate one of the biggest hurdles for governments in embracing Web 2.0 will be solved.

9.1 Is social networking a business model?

I have just joined Linkedin and I have sent out requests, My uncle has an account and I can see that his business, developing 5 star B&Bs and hotels, including interior decorating. He is continually dealing with people in Australia & Asia and as many of his clients use his service more than once I can see his business would benefit from using a social network in order to keep his business fresh in his clients’ minds.

An effective business model has a combination of different concepts such as infrastructure, offering, customers and finances. Social networking as a standalone business model design would not be functional, but as part of a business model it would be a valuable tool in the management of customer relationships.
Businesses keep in contact with their customers through phone calls, emails and traditional hardcopy mail, but I can see a great benefit to many business through establishing a social network between themselves and their clients. An example is; Last weekend I caught a business show with David Kosh, (it was obviously sponsored by Westpac, but I’ve put that aside) he was assisting two young guys who had established a ‘boot camp’ exercise business, they wanted a way to keep established clients when they employed a new trainer to take the class they established. It was all about keeping it personal. The business lady suggested contacting their clients with emails to ask how they were going and if they needed any advise to keep the personal contact, which is good, but … a social network would be a lot better. Through a social network all members of the class could be connected in another way and the greater the friendship between participants the more likely they will keep coming to boot camp classes. Also it could provide an opportunity where the trainers could give general tips to all, which could create discussions or they communicate by private email if the issue is more personal. It would also provide an opportunity for members’ contacts to get interested and join the group.

For the down side though, if a couple of people get disgruntled and start winging on the social network it could lead to people moving on, but it does give the business managers the opportunity to quickly address the issues, which will keep the customers satisfied.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model

The Elgg Social Engine

d) Elgg.org is a social networking and social publishing platform, which powers a diverse range of social groups. It appears to be a well developed site and it promotes itself as being ‘elegant’ and ‘flexible’ with ‘scalable solutions for organizations, groups and individuals. It offers users an activity stream which shows your own actions, your friends' activity and the activity from across the site. It also offers other entities such as profiles, notifications, groups, blogs and embedded files, a full file repository and microblogging.

It has an appealing look and I like the uncluttered, clean look that I saw on the demo site. It has a professional look, which I like and I think it would be an attractive alternative to Facebook as a work-based social network.


Reference
http://elgg.org/