1 Not so SURL-iously

OK, not a huge fan of Second Life. Full stop.

I was reminded of this while attending a Second Life Educators (SLED) meet-and-greet this evening. It wasn't much of an event. While the four other attendees promised that they typically dance, chat, and drink, and drink (yep, I said "and drink" twice because they said "and drink" twice. Apparently virtual drinking is a big deal. Seriously?) there wasn't much going on last night.

OK, clearly I went to the wrong event (for me). I figured it would be a good way to get my feet wet. But perhaps I should have attended one of the science-oriented, or research-oriented functions. I'm an all-business kind of girl in SL. I want a lecture, or presentation, or conference. Something focused. No dancing or drinking. More chatting and sharing ideas.

So there it is. My big gripe. And part of the problem was I picked the wrong event--a social event.

I am no stranger to SL. The few events I have attended in the past have largely been on my home University's Catamount Island. I have helped Neil (who largely built the Island) to demonstrate basic functionality and telecommuting. I have watched instructors teach, and have toured classrooms and educational facilities on Catamount Island.

But I am really not a huge fan. When I arrived at the SLED meet and greet, the vibe was akin to a pack of dogs pissing on posts and sniffing each others assholes. The group of four ladies clearly knew each other and had a code (or shorthand if you will) for their largely text-based conversation. Lots of "slash glare" comments were exchanged between these ladies. I don't know what that means. I assumed it meant, "hey noob, we are a part of a clique--lol."

I introduced myself, and after the requisite "hellos" and "welcomes," it was pointed out that I'm "two years old, and no profile information." Then, one SLED lady started making weird, sort of provokative gestures. Another started dancing and then flying around the room like she was Trinity from the freaking Matrix. It was bizarre--not in a good and wholesome way. So do people do that in their business meetings, or is that behavior simply a function of the more casual atmosphere of the meet-and-greet. What ever it is, it made my feel itchy inside. Perhaps if the conversation weren;t so inane... 

So there it is. I am part of this problem. In the two years I have been a sometimes SL citizen, I have not bothered to change my clothes, update my profile information, or leave Catamount Island if I can help it. It just doesn't capture my imagination.

That doesn't mean that SL os not a game changer for education. It simply means it is not a game-changer for my digital life. I will likely go back to skulking about Catamount Island on occasion, leaving the SLED meet-and-greeters to their dancing, chatting, and drinking, and drinking.

4 From Virtual Life to Real Life with Twitter

I recently won flowers on Twitter!

I won a beautiful $50 professionally arranged vase of flowers.  I did not know the florist before hand, but had been following her on Twitter for a few weeks.

I have thought long and hard about whether or not this "counts" for the assignment. The arrangement was concluded via email, and the assignment rules specifically state "Don't cheat by just using email or phone call- this should use one or more of the tools you've got." However,  I think that it is important to point out that this was a wholly organic bridge between virtual and real worlds.

Let me explain...

As a part of my blogging strategy I follow numerous people on twitter, both local and national people. Generally, the only relationship I have with fellow bloggers is through Twitter and blog comments. Nonetheless, the relationships I have developed through these two channels has become rich in many instances, and has resulted in email exchanges. As a matter of fact, if I do ever email someone in my blogging industry, it is generally after establishing a solid relationship through Twitter, online discussion forums, and commenting on blogs. I never email someone out of the blue. It just seems weird, like cold calling on the phone.

Anyway, I started following @EnchantedFlorst and re-tweeting her tweets. She followed me back. Here's how it went down the day I made real life contact...

I was in the midst of bantering with the Yellow Pages marketing folks and @EnchantedFlorst via Twitter about old media verses new media marketing.

I stepped away from my desk, and when I came back I saw that @enchantedflorst was giving away flowers again. I had seen this before and had re-tweeted it. This time, I decided to participate.

From @Enchantedflorst:

As per her instructions, I emailed her seventeen minutes after her tweet asking if I was too late. I then
re-tweeted her free flower offer so my own followers would be exposed to her.

And then...I WON! Woohoo!

From @Enchantedflorst:

And then...I re-tweeted once again to thank @enchantedflorst and give her additional exposure.

From Me (hindsighbride):

Furthermore, there were some emailing SNAFUs that Twitter helped remedy. A few emails didn't get through to my email box. Janet from @enchantedflorst direct messaged me on Twitter instead.

While Janet offered to deliver them that evening, I asked if I could drive out to Asheville and interview her for my blog. She suggested we meet at Lady Luck Flower Farm.

I ended up writing a blog post as well as interviewing both Janet from Enchanted Florist and Katie from Lady Luck Flower Farm. Both interviews will be published on my blog in the next few weeks.

So in some ways I "cheated" by emailing. I did not blog about this immediately because of the email clause. However, the more I looked for opportunities to "get the assignment done," the more those opportunities seemed false.

I had a real, organic web 2.0 experience that connected the virtual and real worlds. Janet was using Twitter and her free flowers to gain exposure. I am using Twitter to gain exposure and meet people to interview. We both met our goals through Twitter and have developed a good working relationship since then. Janet comments on my blog and I re-tweet a lot of her tweets. It is a mutually beneficial relationship that started on Twitter, not through email or phone--though we have used both since.

I have also recently made contact with the organizers for a major blogging conference through Twitter. I believe they found me because I was #hashtagging their name and commenting about this year's conference. This is super exciting because some of the bloggers I admire the most are involved with this.

 Incidentally, I also found a number of posts about the "underground blogosphere" and email. It seems that email is a great complement to web 2.0, especially as relationships mature.


However, the point is, Twitter is a great way to foster and strengthen community among bloggers and businesses. How else could I possibly meet these people? 

0 Reaching New Markets with Web 2.0

Lately, I have heard more than a few people talk about the "marketing power" of web 2.0. I have become increasingly offended by this and similar statements about gaining "market share"through Twitter, or developing "product awareness" using FaceBook.

What!? Or in the parlance of Internet cussing WTF!?

Now don't get me wrong, I believe that the Internet can be a powerful tool for businesses and professionals. However, I think that the old-school marketing strategies of finding your "target audience" and pitching your product to them doesn't work. People are primarily looking for two things on the Internet: information and community.

If you are a business looking to FAIL at social media, treat your social media platforms like press-release forums. Only Tweet and FaceBook about your products and events. Only blog about your products. Never comment on another person's blog, tweet, or FaceBook comment. In short, be self-centered and only allow information to travel one way--out from you.

If you want to SUCCEED at social media, treat it for what it is: a vehicle for exchanging information and ideas. I am a blogger so I will discuss this in terms of blogging (not this, but another blog that I run).

I of course want my blog to succeed. I want lots of readers, and eventually, I would like to offer limited advertising of businesses I trust and whose service I think would appeal to my readers. So yes, being able to write for money is a goal of mine. However, it is not the be-all-end-all for my blogging life.

The real reason I started blogging is I have something I think is important to say. Note that I did not start blogging because everyone else was doing it, or I thought I could make money doing it. Rather, I feel I have experiences and expertise that will benefit my readers. I want people to benefit from my ideas and suggestions. I am also well aware that a blogger needs other people and ideas to survive. I need a larger community of people that I both tap into and contribute to to keep my ideas fresh. In addition to blogging, I have a personal relationship with local businesses that I blog about. I tweet about other blogs, useful links, as well as more personal things. I participate fully in several large discussion and networking forums in my field, and I comment on other peoples blogs.

In short, I am an active member of my chosen niche community. I do not constantly push links to my blog in emails, comments or discussion forums. I am not constantly referring to myself, my blog, or my product. Rather I participate in online conversations in a similar way that I would in person. After all, you wouldn't think of going to a professional event and constantly try to sell a product would you?

The Internet is the same nowadays. The days of hard sell e-commerce are a gone, or at least largely ineffective. Today the internet is about conversations, communitiy, and sharing ideas.

Don't believe me? Just look at the ubiquity of comments in blogs, online stores, and everywhere you turn. People no longer want to be on the recieving end of a hard-sell marketing campaign. Rather, they want to be part of a conversation.

That does not mean that "marketing" is dead. Lord knows that I am constantly trying to up my Google ranking, attract more readers, and generally raise awareness about my own blog. I even have business cards I hand out. However, I also know that I am a part of a larger conversation, and I embrace my role as an active a contributing member of a larger online community.

0 Appalachian State Featured on Smashing Mag's Showcase

Well, WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/19/showcase-of-academic-and-higher-education-websites/

3 Surf's Up on the World Wild Web...

... And by "surfing" in mean couch surfing.
This week has been an interesting week. I've been introduced to two websites that I would never have thought to exist. One is a dating site for married people who want to commit adultery. {Call me a prude, but I'm just not going to glorify it with a link} The other, is CouchSurfing.org.

 Perhaps you remember when you were college age, or thereabouts, and you visited your young and poor buddies in their cramped postage-stamp sized efficiency in the city. Where did you sleep? On their couch of course. Or, if they slept on your own couch, you may have slept on the floor. Perhaps a similar situation played itself out with a "friend-of-a-friend."

This is called couch surfing. And it should come as no surprise... {should being the operative word, because both sites shocked the hell out of me}...it should come as no surprise that couch surfing has become organized on a global scale through the magic of web 2.0 and the lure of social networking in cyber space.

Ok, ok, I hear you. BFD you might be thinking. This type of user-generated content and social networking IS the web. What's the big woop?

The big woop is this: couch surfing links the virtual with the real world. While arguably other sites such as CraigsList and Match.com do the same. Couch surfing is different. Barring the one-night-stand ads on CraigsList, CouchSurfing.org is unique in that you are inviting people you've met online into your most intimate space--your home.

My initial reaction: I'll get raped! So of course I googled "couchsurfing" and "rape," and guess what? A Hong Kong woman was raped last year in the UK. So there you go. There is a danger that a woman CouchSurfing to travel alone will get raped. Yup.

But searching further and digging deeper, the rape seems to be more the exception than the rule. It's hard to say why exactly this is. It could be a matter of self-selection among members. CouchSurfing seems to attract young and alternative crowds. It could be that there are thousands, not millions of members.

I could also be the safety mechanisms CouchSurfing.org has incorporated into its culture and policies. For example, the second questions in the FAQ section, which is part of the introductory reading for new members, is, "is it safe?" The first is, "is it really free." As outlined on their Safety Page, the folks at CouchSurfing are committed to promoting a safe environment for it's members. To this end they have employed a verification system which requires a credit card, which in turn requires a real name and address. There is also a fairly extensive and partially anonymous referral system. Given these options, a member can mitigate their risk by only surfing with or offering a couch for verified members with references.

So the final verdict for me?
Well I am holding off on my own verification process for now, and I currently do not have a couch available. But I have spent a great deal of time working on my profile and searching through member groups for like-minded people. Soooo, it looks like I will stay a while to check things out more.

Oh, yeah, and this morning, I casually mentioned the site to my husband. While I made no promises, and he had the same skeptical response as I did at first, we are trying to keep our minds and hearts open about the project.

It's just such a good idea. Question is: Is it a good idea for poeple our age, in their thirties? Or is this just a young person's thing. I hope it's not just for the young. I really like the idea of a foreign/regional travel exchange for adults.

3 WikaWhat? A look at WikiQuote and WikiBooks

Photo From The Heart of the Alleghanies; Or Western North Carolina
Available at GoogleBooks

I am a historian. A working one to boot. I teach, write, and work in a history museum. I am routinely on the lookout for old historic books and archaic ideas. Specifically, my research interests include turn of the twentieth century Appalachia. Not necessarily the hillbilly Appalachia but rather a more dynamic Fin de Siècle Appalachia. I have relied upon GoogleBooks more than once to read a hard-to-find, out-of-print 19th century book on Appalachia. I spend a lot of time on GoogleBooks.

However, GoogleBooks is not perfect. And there is a lot of debate about how their digitization project fits into copyright and intellectual property laws, especially among academics (See NY Times article, Google's Pnan for Out of Print Books is Challenged.) While most of the books I look for are in the public domain, as I expand my research to include the interwar years and even LBJ's Great Society, it becomes clear whether or not Google will continue to be useful to me.

To make a short story tediously long (as we historians love to do,) and am frequently on the look out for new sources of historical evidence. To this end, WikiQuote and WikiBooks seemed promising enough.

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
~Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks, (Summer 1886 – Fall 1887), Available on WikiQuote

WikiQuote is exactly was is sounds like. It's a wiki full of quotes. What makes Wiki Quote different from other quote archives and databases such as BrainyQuote and ThinkExist is WikiQuote's commitment to accuracy and provenance. Basically,when you search for a quote in WikiQuote, not only do you get the author and text of the quote, you get the date, publication from which it came, and associated links to WikiPedia and other Wiki projects. WikiQuote offers extensive coverage of films, books, TV shows, religious texts. Basically, when you find a quote you like, you have available to you a preponderance of information.

The downside of WikiQuote for a mountain historian? Well, keyword searches for Appalachia, Mountaineer, and moonshine did not yield any better results than competitor sites. Which is to say, not a lot.  Still, if you find a topic that is better covered, WikiQuote is the best quote database out there as far as I can tell.

 A plate of Risotto. Photo taken by Kobako

Published here under a Creative Commons License

WikiBooks was not as useful for my own research as I had hoped. Keep in mind that I am not giving a blanket thumbs up or thimbs down, but rather evaluating both projects according to mine own and any reader who may be interested in a "MtnHistory" blog.

Unlike GoogleBooks, WikiBooks is a textbook repository meant to dovetail with WikiVersity. This means that, rather than hard to find, out-of-print, and public domain books, WikiBooks only features textbooks. A perusal through the history section yielded precious little for 19th century American history, and nothing at all in 20th and 21st century histories. Nary a book could be found on Appalachia.

However, non-historical texts that caught my eye included the WikiJunior project, particularly the Solar System book. Also Cookbook seemed decent. While it does not offer the eye candy one can find on the web and in foodie blogs, it does offer solid instruction on proper techniques as well as international and historical perspectives on food. If you are interested in a topic that WikiBooks covers, you are free to download copies of books to your local machine for offline reading.

2 Are "We" Dumb? Or Just Plain Ignorant?

What is important for an individual to know when they graduate from elementary school? middle school? high school? college? It is a simple question that regularly fuels debate over curriculum, standardized testing, and assessment.

 Public Domain Photo from WikiCommons

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is concerned that neither middle school kids in South Boston, nor Harvard graduates know what causes the earth's seasons or the phases of the moon. Their documentary "A Private Universe,"examines why students, even science majors at Harvard, have a difficult time answering these supposedly easy questions. (Incidentally, I did not know what caused the earths phases of the moon. I have long thought/assumed that the phases of the moon were caused by the earths shadow. Um, right, that's not it. The moon's phases are caused by the sun reflecting off of it vis-a-vis its position to the earth.)

 Photo Courtesy of MoonConnections.com

My first reaction to A Private Universe was this: WTF? Who cares? Why is it important for me--a historian, a project coordinator, a museum worker-- to answer questions about the causes of the seasons and the phases of the moon? I am more interested in the historical roots of the persistence of racial, regional, gender and socio-economic stereotypes in a post Civil Rights America. Can the astro-physicists tell me what Supreme Court Law legally ended racial segregation? (Brown Vs The Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas) Can they tell me the year? (1954) Can they tell me the Supreme Court Case that Brown Challenged? (Plessy vs Ferguson) Can they tell me the detaols and significance of those cases? Really? Gee, not only do these cases make up the cornerstones of understanding historic race relations in America, they generally common knowledge among American historians and are taught at both the high school and college levels. How about Title IX? Does everyone know the significance of Title IX to gender history? OK, I'll stop.

The point is, as we move forward in our educational journeys, we continue to specialize. Scientists focus their attentions on science and historians on history...

But wait...

After mulling over this a few days, I realized that the point of the documentary has little to do with mastering content. It has to to with leaving school (elementary school , middle school, high school, college, graduate school) with our assumptions and prejudices about the world/universe fully intact. Let me say that again: The problem with the current state of American education is students routinely leave school with their assumptions and prejudices about the world/universe fully intact. 

This is a problem for all educators. A big problem. A Private Universe chronicles a middle school unit plan about seasonal changes and the phases of the moon. Highlighting a particularly bright student's struggle to reconcile her long held assumptions about direct light with the information she is learning in the classroom, we see the student's reluctance to let go of her erroneous assumptions about indirect sunlight.

As a historian, my heart sinks when I think of what happens when students cannot or will let go of their assumptions about race, class, and gender. Nonetheless, this has been an illuminating week. I feel like I have a bit of clarity regarding the persistence of sexism, racism, heterosexism, and cultural and religious intolerance--to name but a few.

 Photo Courtesy dewfall's Flickr Photostream

So what do we do about it? Well, I am not a big fan of our present standardized testing fetish. I believe such testing only promotes rote learning. Instead, I think the solution lies in teaching students how to think. This means teaching them how to ask questions, hard questions. From a history instructor's stand point, it means teaching them how to be deeply reflective and empathetic. To get away from incessent self reference. I see A Private Universe as a rallying cry. To be vigilant of my own assumptions; to acknowledge that they exist; to reevaluate them and ask questions about them regularly; to assess their accuracy; to make informed decisions based on available knowledge; and to inspire my students to do the same.