Theoretical Junk » Interesting Site

Two Become One: Whose Identity Is It Anyway?

Brandon - admin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:19:11 +0000

Radio Lab recently had a show called (So-Called) Life in which a woman in need of a transplant test her children’s DNA. They find that the children match the father’s DNA, but not hers! Additional testing reveals that the DNA in her blood is completely different from the DNA in her saliva — she is, essentially, two different people.

Basically, doctors have concluded that she is a chimera. That is, her mother was pregnant with two embryos that fused within the first few days of life. They did not blend, but rather the new embryo contained some of the parts from baby A and some of the parts from baby B — she was her own twin sister. To put it into perspective, if the eggs had not completely fused, this woman would have been Siamese Twins. Instead, she is both twins in one body.

She started talking about the thought the she is two people, that her salivary glands differ from her circulatory system, that she has two different bodies inside of her. Naturally, this raised some interesting questions. What is her identity? Is she two people? Is she one person? What is a person, if the DNA suggests that she is two persons?

CI597 on Twitter

Brandon - admin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:34:29 +0000

So you have a Twitter account (if not, check out How To Create a Twitter Account), but can’t find your fellow classmates (or TLT Symposium Feed) to follow.

Here you go:

1. Log in to your Twitter account.

2. Go to an individual’s Twitter page (a full list is below). The address for any individual’s profile page is www.twitter.com/[username]. For example, Cole’s username is colecamplese, so his profile page is www.twitter.com/colecamplese

3. Click on “Follow”, which is under the username.

4. You are now following that person (in this example, Cole Camplese). Rinse, repeat. Well, don’t rinse, but repeat steps 2-3 for each person you want to follow. Another option is to look through any user’s “Following” list, which is located on the bottom right of their profile page. Hovering your mouse over any user icons reveals the users name. Simply click on that icon and you will be taken directly to that user’s profile page so you can complete step 3.

CI597C Classmates (and other pertinent users) on Twitter:
Here are the usernames for CI 597C classmates. To follow any user, just go to their profile page – www.twitter.com/[username]

1. The TLT Symposium feed: twitter.com/TLTSymposium
2. Me – rubywahoo
Other classmates (I won’t share real names since it is their choice to protect their identity and this blog is publicly available):
3. smcdonald
4. rookmdc
5. donnamar
6. psugal
7. teamtweet
8. dbrunner02
9. bennettulmer
10. bburns
11. jjd24
12. JeanMarieD
13. skerlin
14. micala (a new member of our community!)
15. robin2go (a new member of our community!)

Enjoy!

Reminder: How to Join Twitter before the TLT Symposium

Brandon - admin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:50:18 +0000

Team Tweet would like to remind everyone to create a Twitter account prior to Saturday’s TLT Symposium so that you are able to tweet (the official name for a message you send via Twitter) your experiences throughout the day. A great portion of our presentation in April will center around our experiences at the symposium.

Here are instructions for creating a Twitter account and finding classmates to follow. If you already have a Twitter account, my next blog entry will help you find CI597C classmates and other pertinent people (like the TLT Symposium) who are on Twitter:

1. Go to Twitter.com
2. Click on “Get Started – Join!”

3. On this page, fill in the required information (your Username is your Twitter identity — choose wisely!) and click “I accept. Create my account.”

4. The next step is to find some friends on Twitter. There are several ways to do this. If you just want to add friends from CI597C, see this blog entry listing 597C classmates on Twitter. Otherwise, continue following the rest of these instructions. Enter your email address and password, and to let Twitter compare your address book to their records. This will let you know of any accounts in your address book who has a Twitter account — family, friends, professor from undergrad who is still in your address book, etc. One flaw with this method is that it only works if the address in your address book matches the address on file with Twitter. For example, you won’t find my account if you have my PSU address (bsr11) or alias (brandonr) in your address book; this is because my Twitter account is linked to my gmail account (my full name at gmail.com).

5. Twitter will show you the results of their search. You can select or deselect anyone you would like to follow. Following someone means you will receive their tweets (messages sent through Twitter) in your stream.

6. Congratulations! You now have a Twitter account! To become a full member of the community, start answering the question, “What are you doing?’, which you can always find on the Twitter home page or on your personal page (www.twitter.com/[yourusername]). See my entry on CI597 classmates on Twitter to find more people to follow, including the TLT Symposium feed.

The Third Little Pig Built a Community Out of Podcasts

Brandon - admin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:33:08 +0000

In a previous entry I describe a Camp on the Web. I originally intended to simply share a new podcast I had created for Golden Slipper Camp, but went off in another direction. This entry, therefore, is dedicated to the podcast.

The first podcast features myself and Uncle Spoon, the camp’s Evening Activities Specialist, explaining our idea and plan for the podcast. Basically, we hope it helps to contribute to the blossoming online community that has developed, as described in the other post.

For now, enjoy the podcast =)

Camp Catches the Web (and I don’t mean spiders)

Brandon - admin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:18:25 +0000

I just realized I have been heavily involved in using web 2.0 to create community but that I haven’t really shared any of my efforts with the class in which I am further exploring some of these concepts. This entry started with the intention of sharing a podcast that I had just created and then expanded into a full blown entry recounting all of my online endeavors. It’s partly to share with you the way I am already using blogs, videos, flickr, social networks, podcasts and wikis, but it also became a great way for me to record my efforts and progress. It is interesting to be involved in and responsible for the comprehensive creation of a brand new community for the camp during the past 10 months, and I look forward to the future implications of the technology and this class. Without further adieu…

For those who don’t know, I am the Program Director for Golden Slipper Camp (GSC). Last summer, in 2007, I decided to start a GSC blog where I gave little, periodic reports on things happening at the camp (Johnny won the talent show by burping the ABC’s, or Bunk 4 won Honor Bunk for being cleanest, etc.) — it was one of my ideas to generate some excitement with parents and alumni. Little did I realize how popular the blog would be! Parents were sending emails and phone calls sharing how much they loved knowing what was going on, and that they felt more like a part of their child’s experience.

The next step was that I set up a GSC Flickr account so that we could share the photos taken by Alisa, our camp photographer. She ended up taking nearly 14,000 pictures, and I even found ways to link them to the blog, like when we had a rainy day activity that ended with a GSC mascot contest. We had each bunk create a mascot for the camp, then took their pictures and posted them on Flickr (mascot picture pages) where families could view them and vote through the blog. We ended up crowning the winning bunk at the camp — and reporting the winner on the blog — a week later.

As soon as the summer ended, I started uploading GSC videos onto YouTube and embedding them into the blog, further generating interest from campers, alumni, parents/families, staff, and club members. I have 40 more hours of skits, songs, and fun things to upload, but my miniDV camera is on the fritz (Tweet or email me if you have one I can borrow!). One piece of advice if you do something similar for one of your organizations: set up a separate YouTube account! I have to be careful now that my identity is directly linked to the camps’ — I can’t upload some of the videos I made as an undergrad (PG-13 rated language or plots) or display my favorites for fear that a camper will see them and it will open a can of worms.

Since the summer ended, I have been using the blog to share news that is passed on to me. At this point it primarily contains announcements of things happening at the camp, contests, alumni marriages, births, and engagements. I hope to start including camper news (Honor Roll on report cards, awards won, graduations and college acceptances, etc.).

The final two pieces of this are an exploding alumni social networking site (400 members in 3 weeks!) and a brand new podcast (UPDATE 2/2/2009: Here is a link to the full menu of GSC podcasts created during the summer of 2008). I realize that this is long, but just wanted to share. It is interesting to be involved in the comprehensive creation of a brand new community over the past 10 months, and I look forward to the future implications of the technology and this class.

Phew! Sorry for the length! I am very interested in having further conversations about this, and look forward to helping others enact similar efforts.

Clark Kent, or Secret Identity Articles

Brandon - admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:56:15 +0000

Ok, so the articles I discuss in this entry aren’t secret, but they may be hidden from you — until now!

As previously mentioned, I am enrolled in a class that studies Community Informatics – the study of how communities use information technology to accomplish and develop their goals.

In week 7 we read some articles that studied the development of community and engagement in virtual communities. I previously mentioned a paper by Blanchard and Markus that provides definitions for physical and virtual communities, and Sense of Community and Sense of Virtual Communities. That article is available on the Week 7 section of our class website (click here) or on my previous blog post.

The theme of this week’s class is Identity, and it directly coincides with the theme of this week’s Wenger’s readings, which Scott and Cole mentioned are moving into the realm of Identity. The Week 8 section of the class web site (click here) has three articles on the subject that you may find interesting, relevant, or helpful in making sense of our class themes.

Take a look around the site. I think you will find multiple weeks with topics and readings that you may find applicable to our discussions on community, identity, and design. Some of them are even mildly interesting =)

Community at the National Level: The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President

Brandon - admin — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:26:55 +0000

I just found this guide through a page that I subscribed to via RSS (thanks, 597!). The page is thepage.time.com, and basically recaps each day’s campaign activity. It’s interesting to see everything at a glance, albeit with a sarcastic viewpoint, and keep tabs on the amazing amount of activity that comprises each day in a presidential election. It is hard for me to imagine how different campaigning was before technology made every day a national event for every candidate, when the average American either read a report in a newspaper or had to travel to the local site of a stump speech…which was delivered on a stump! While the electoral power lies in the states, the campaign itself involves the national community. Digital books blow my mind, too. If only Ben Franklin were alive today…

How a Blog Works

Brandon - admin — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:42:56 +0000

I read blogs. I also publish two (here is my other one). And, given the number of blogs that exist, there’s a pretty good chance that you yourself either blog or read a blog. In fact, if you are reading this right now then there is a 100% chance that you read at least one blog.

That’s why I thought an article in the latest issue (February 2008) of Wired Magazine was interesting. It explains how a Blog goes from my thoughts to your eyes, with a few stops on the way! Check it out here.