On Spam, Google, Curt Bonk and Flying Fish

It's been said that I spend too much time on the Net, so to save time I've been trying out Google Alerts.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include: * monitoring a developing news story * keeping current on a competitor or industry * getting the latest on a celebrity or event * keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

I have a few alerts running, one of which is for the "University of Glamorgan".
To be honest the responses I get for this query are fairly mundane and repetitive but on October 12th. I was intrigued to notice a message which included the following text.

UK E-Learning Reflections: UK leads the way or does it?
Monday the 15th was spent in Wales with a presentation to teachers of the future of ICT and schools at the University of Glamorgan ......

What caught my eye in this instance, is that I was there, I heard the presentation and after the event read the speaker's blog and therefore recognised the posting. (It's true I spend oo much time on the Net)

The speaker was Curt Bonk from Indianna University, the talk took place on January 15th at the University of Glamorgan, Treforest and he blogged about it on January 20th.. The talk was memorable; the speaker threw me a stuffed fish, and the blog made for interesting reading.
Why then, should it appear in a Google alert ten months after the event?

Following the provided link I found myself reading Curt's blog entry again, but this time on an anonymous blog, made of pieces cut and pasted from the net; 23 random articles, copied without reference their original source.
Examination of the page reveals that each article has been tampered with and links to commercial sites added.

It's spam!

The problem here is that I nearly fell for it.
The spam came courtesy of Google.
Google Alerts sent me the link.

Reader beware!

PS. (added 17.10.07)
My most recent Google alert message arrived yesterday informing me that this post existed!

If I were to adjust the settings on my alerts it would be interesting to explore how long it takes for an alert to be sent.
I'm just curious.

On Blogging

Here's an insightful quotation from the Wired Blogs.

"Blogging is not about making friends, it’s about expressing yourself truthfully and in the process providing some hitherto unforeseen insight into an important issue or topic of the day. If you make friends, that's a bonus. Real blogging is about shedding the politics and letting it all hang out. Sometimes that honesty yields less than enjoyable results, but other times the honesty of certain blog posts can inspire us all into action or thinking about important issues in a different light."

(via Scripting News)

On Podcasts, Vodcasts and Radio

For some time at Radio Five Live the BBC has been exploring and crossing the boundaries between online and on air broadcasting. The announcers and journalists announce with pride that Radio Five can be heard on 909 and 693AM, on digital tv, online and on Digital radio. Webcam views of the studios are often available and the Five Live Blogs have become an integral part of much of the station's output, many transmitted programmes are available as podcasts. Such is their enthusiasm for exploring our brave new digital world that they devote an hour of radio time each week to "covering the news as it's seen by bloggers, podcasts and citizen media". Strangely this programme is broadcast at 2AM on Tuesday mornings but digitally aware listeners can catch up via podcasts or via the programme web site.

I listen to Radio Five Live at various times during the week in the car, in bed and often while I am online. One of my favourite programmes is the Simon Mayo afternoon show where I enjoy the book and tv reviews. However the jewel in the crown of this programme is without a doubt the weekly film reviews presented jointly by Mayo and Dr Mark Kermode. I cannot always hear these reviews live and often listen to the podcast.

I was interested to notice that this week the film review has been released on line as a video podcast "radio with pictures". We can see the radio broadcasters at work. Its strange, radio as televison in a quick time movie on my laptop.

Now the original film reviews were entertaining, informative and thought provoking, Kermode and Mayo talk with interest about films sometimes supporting their discussion with soundtracks from the chosen films. No need for pictures, no need for moving images. Radio at it's best.

The video podcast contains additional information, the spoken words are the same (I think) but are now supported by still images of the movie posters and video clips from the films.

I've tried "watching" the vodcast with my eyes closed; it works.
I've watched the vodcast with my eyes open; it works.

I'm not sure which is best. Should I be comparing them?

There are things to think about here!
Do we need to see moving images of a radio programme?
Would all radio programmes benefit from the vodcast treatment.
Should radio programmes be vodcast?

Is this a case of we have a technology and we must use it?

Creating a Blogger Archive.

There will come a time when an archive or a backup copy of a blog will be useful.

In an educational setting such a facility could be of use, particularly if the blog is to contain material that might be required as part of an assessment. The author of the blog and the supervising tutor might need a copy.

The Blogger Help files are not that helpful, in as much as "Blogger does not have an import or export function" but Blogger help does answer the question "How do I create a back up of my entire blog?'

But look how complicated that is.
Here is a nice set of instructions that I came across with a little help from Lifehacker.

The same set of instructions offer advice for archiving comments.
Unfortunately the comments are not combined with the original posts.

I have tried out the method using this blog, it works.

Should I ever move blog host, now my words come with me.

Who Is Reading This?

Curiously the number of visitors to On a Hill continues to rise; the number of comments is rising but only just!

There are discussions taking place relating comments elsewhere.
Some bloggers allow them, some don't.
My limited observations tell me that far more blogs are read than are commented on (the one percent rule). I rarely leave comments on the many blogs that I visit but I learn much by reading them.

Interestingly when I make the effort to leave a comment on someone else's blog, my visitor statistics show me that they nearly always come and check my blog.

Eric Schmidt CEO of Google met some Republican governors in the USA last year, a meeting, reported in the New York Times. During the meeting :-

"Mr. Schmidt said that by by Google’s calculation, a new blog is being created every second of every day. He said that Google now estimates that the average blog is read by one person."

Is that true?
If that is true why oh why do Technorati spend so much time counting and indexing them?

Visualising Links

I've been thinking of the links created between the participants in our project.

Left to their own devices, of the one hundred and thirty subjects twelve created links between their blogs (9%). The links were created within two separate nodes, one with eight members the other with four. Our subjects were not that connected.

Within each of the nodes as you might expect the number of other blogs linked to varied. Some of the members of these nodes had no outward links, but were linked to. To my mind these blogs with no outward links were not really contributors to the node, I suppose in biological terms they would be parasitic in nature, not contributing to the knowledge base of the node but drawing from it. Nothing wrong with that but the teacher in me wants to draw everyone in to contribute to the discussion.

What we don't know is whether members of each of the nodes actually read the blogs they were linked to. We might assume that they did but unless they left a pertinent comment or referenced the reading on their own blog we have no proof.

So we should analyse the links together with the content of the blog or comments about the blog.
Counting links is inadequate.........but you knew that didn't you.

I've been accumulating information relating to the visualisation of links and web sites.
Some of it is going to be useful.

Web sites as graphs, these are so attractive, if only I could illustrate our nodes like this.

A Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods, find the type you need.

Here's a interesting visualisation but the blog post is more important, its all about the blend between asynchronous and synchronous eLearning.

Vizster by Danah Boyd and Jeffrey Heer. I want to find out more about this. Their visualisations look like my scribbled drawings. Look at their photo gallery. How do we move our bloggers into a community?

On a Hill as DNA?

Linking

The cartoon posted on eLgg.net on December 1st makes interesting viewing (via abject learning). We bloggers and readers could do well to remember Dave's observation.

In February of this year, Stuart Luman wrote a short piece for the New York Magazine entitled Linkology. The article contains a graphic illustrating how the 50 most popular blogs (at that time) were linked to one another.
Food for thought

If we have to assess /evaluate student blogs, should consideration of the links between blogs be part of that process? Tools of the blogosphere rank the major blogs by links in, examining links out could provide more information.

This blog will never rate highly in the global scheme of things, visitors will come and go by accident or as a result of deliberate searching. The information here may be of use to someone. However in time the information linked to out of the blog may well be of use.

In a group of student bloggers, links and reflective / critical comments between blogs help students develop a community of practice and should be actively encouraged, especially if the comments are made in the right spirit by critical friends. The links out from a student blog would provide a richer view of the depth and range of a student's reading and thinking. Blogs that simply echo references / links provided by tutors reveal much about their authors, blogs containing additional links provide evidence of additional research. A showcase for the blogger.

Of course a vast range of links out is of no more use than a vast range of links in unless the commentary accompanying the links reveals evidence of reflection, linking new and old to create new learning. Anyone can create a list of links out (like leaving books on a coffee table), using / sharing /reading the links is what matters.

Beth Kanter writes about this.

She remembers Robert Scobel saying
"a bloggers influence should not be measured by in-bound links (like technorati) but by out-bound links"


Something for us to think about.

On Blog Evaluation

David Warlick at 2cents worth has been writing about evaluating blogs.

It makes for interesting reading.
He and others have been wondering how blogs should be assessed. What was pleasing, was to read that they had come across the Blog Reflection Rubric from San Diego State University. Pleasing because we came across it earlier in the year and drew on it in developing our project.

David Warlick makes an interesting if obvious distinction when he asks "'Are you teaching blogging?' or 'Are you teaching communication?'".

What happens if the purpose of the blogging is to draw the student to reflect upon learning, to enhance their learning experience, to draw them deeper into the process of learning, to develop their skills as practioners of learning.

How do you assess reflection?

Perhaps we can draw upon David's further observations. He writes

"Of course, there are some distinct differences between writing on paper and writing on a blog. Your assignment might involve reading the blogs of classmates and then comment, responding to their writings in some way. This would probably require a richer rubric for evaluation, because you are evaluating a conversation, not just the putting down of some ideas"

I don't see that there are any differences between writing on paper or writing in a blog. Paper or a blog involves writing for a particular audience and purpose.
What is to be evaluated the writing or the purpose? A daily or weekly blog entry is no different to a daily or weekly paper journal entry and should be evaluated as such.

The immediacy of blog access provides some interesting differences with paper publishing and RSS makes the monitoring of blogs more immediate; but the content remains whatever medium is used for the publishing. The methodology of blogging may need to be considered as in the San Diego rubric; but apart from the inclusion of links and the possibility of linking of individual blogs and the possibility of a vast audience what difference is there to the methodology of blogging and paper journal writing.

Neither do I believe that the blogosphere challenges our notions of what it means to be literate. Its a medium not a literacy.

David's post is attracting comments and suggestions from other practioners. I'm looking forward to reading them.