Journal 3: Community Building with Technologies

“Oh, like a talking drum”.

In chapter 6, community building with technologies teaches us how far we have come in the way we can now communicate with each other in order to support the many different communities and activities that we participate in during our daily lives. For example; I can think of at least 10 different networks that I am a part of right now, specifically the McGill based web cite entitled, web-ct allows me to communicate with both my teachers and classmates while at the same time viewing course-related material. Without a communication network such as this, our ‘Global Village’ (a term coined by communications guru Marshall McLuhan) as we know it would cease to exist. The mere conception of WEB 2.0 ever more clarfies the idea that the internet is a constantly changing – with blogs, podcasting, facebook and more – revelation after revelation – these continous innovations are only one way to characterize this constant flow of activity on the web. However, grasping the power to manipulate this technology reveals much reward. Chapter 6 explains how when students and teachers own the knowledge, they become much more committed to building upon and reinventing such knoweldge rather than simply memorizing it and reprocessing it. I agree with this notion in its entirety, as this underlying principle was easily proved during the lab work in class. During class we were given the task of setting up our very own homepage from which we used a specific template. I found that while at the begginning I might have been unfamiliar with the applications and a little bit tentative, that once I began to experiment and actually ‘own’ the capabilities to manipulate the web page, I then became very comfortable and the software seemed to almost guide and shape the rest of my webpage. Clearly, Kenneth Boulding was web-on when he stated that, “we make our tools, and then they shape us”. Similarily, this idea can be easily translated to the community building that we have learned about in class.

Finally, this weeks chapter mentioned quite a few web sites that act as conglomerate communication systems. However, I found the wikiindex the most interesting. To vistit the wikiindex goto www.wikiindex.com . This site is very interesting because it uses both structured data and wikimedia to support this information-gone-blog-crazy type of site. Nevertheless, this website is truly a great example of the type of things we are learning in class. This site attempts to catalog and organize all available wikis in hopes of creating and bringing the internet wiki community together. In essence, only once we have knowledge over our web resources will we be able to flourish and grow as a community.
Answers to chapter questions:

1. I feel like teachers and students both have a responsiblity to each other – as well as to the rest of the people in and amongst the class. It is important that respect throughout the class is held in a constant form of equilibrium so that neither student, peer nor teacher feels left out or unappreciated. Further, it is important to have an open and friendly environment where teachers and students can learn from eachother and share new ideas and viewpoints on the material being covered. While chapter 6 informed us that classrooms are not your typical communities due to overwhelming competition, leading to feelings of disconnect – it certainly does not have to be this way. Technology can help, as it can act as a catalyst when integrating different people with different backrounds together. Through technology we can be steadily introduced to our peers and sit back and relax as the group and - community seems to take shape around us. Technology is only ever destructive in the classroom when others go too far ahead and students begin to feel lost in their once familiar settings.

2. I think a good way to make sure everyone is one the same page is to use group-work once in a while as a way for students to learn from their peers. Often, classes will consist of a wide range of talents – so why help the class help each other? I think that by implementing various ‘check’ tools a teacher can both stay on his toes and keep the class moving at a consistant and varied speed.