Teachers' Best practices thru Digital Ethnography Experiment

Because of the kind request and concern of Jamille Ann Abiera, I am moving the deadline of the project on Digital Ethnography--Capturing the CCS Teachers' Best Practices to August 10, 2010. I hope this will give everyone a fair chance to produce excellent and fascinating project outputs for the term.

What's the fuss about Facebook's panic button

In the second quarter of this year, parents and other concerned citizens in UK and Europe organized themselves to pressure Facebook to add the panic button on its interface. Here are the related news links for the casual reading of the SC students.

Facebook installs 'panic button' for children - http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100712/tc_afp/usbritaininternetfacebookchild

Facebook murderer to serve at least 35 years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wear/8555221.stm

Questions to think about--

Can the panic button deter or prevent crimes like this?
If yes, in what way?
If not, what should be done?
What kind of online behavior should be promoted?
How can you teach your younger brother or sister to behave online, think of safety constantly? How do you protect them as a parent or an older sibling?
Should Facebook succumbed to the clamor of the parents/citizens?

Results of the Youtube Traffic Experiment

It is quite interesting that last school year when my students did a similar experiment, the top categories were Music and Entertainment. But the trend right now is moving towards People and Blogs. Together with my student groups this term, we have observed that Youtube has become an extension of family celebrations; a hub of personal experiences and enrichment; and it does not matter if there are many or few followers. Youtube is the top repository of human experiences.

Here are the links to the recent experiment conducted by the students of Information Systems Major--

Ana Domagas' group

http://eatpraylovetravel.tumblr.com/

Ken Sotamco's group
http://www.soccompexperiment.blogspot.com/

Jesse Mangulabnan's group
http://soccomp4001.blogspot.com/2010/07/experiment-no6-youtube-traffic.html

Clifford Yap's group
http://ryukansentsumuji01.blogspot.com

Chester Patrick Abrahan's group
http://soccompningcha.blogspot.com/

Julie Belmonte's group (Julie Belmonte, Diorella Chua, Ryan Melgar, Camille Tinagan )
http://sukisasoccomp.tumblr.com
http://roadknee.tumblr.com


Irene Ita-as' group
http://paomigsrapandice.tumblr.com

Kevin Roque's group
http://angorero.blogspot.com/

Janell Samar's group (maica jorge, koke jamosale, vianne obillo, bianca samar, francesca wong )
http://www.soccompexperiments2010.blogspot.com/

Aljohn Milanes' group
http://socialbloggingforsocialcomputing.blogspot.com/

The YOUTUBE TRAFFIC Experiment

The objective of this experiment is to determine the level of popularity, confidence and web host reliability of Youtube as a resource and social media facility. It is also the intention of this experiment to provide opportunity for the study groups to gather, consolidate and interpret data in a meaningful manner. Conscientiousness, patience, critical thinking, and cooperation among group members are expected in this experiment.

On July 14, 15 and 16, all study groups will be conducting the Youtube Traffic Experiment. SGs have the option to approach the experiment in two ways--

a. choose a specific schedule like 1:00-3:00pm for three consecutive days;
b. choose a day let’s say July 15, 6:00am-12nn or 6:00pm-12am.
for a total of six (6) hours.

Every two hours, the group will watch the recent 20 videos uploaded in Youtube.

1. Analyze the videos uploaded in terms of Youtube category. Use tag cloud to measure the popularity of the category.

Reference to tag cloud:
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/page/Tag_Cloud.html
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/89ade5ae18be22b20118beb016cb0109/comments/8d3e022cad9c11ddbb7a000255111976

Youtube categories are:
Music Entertainment People & Blogs Comedy Sports Education Autos Film HowTo News Pets Science Travel

2. What are the most commonly used tags? (You may also use tag cloud for this purpose.)
3. What’s the average length of the video uploaded?
4. What’s the average age of the video uploader?
5. Get the statistics of uploads by country.
6. Get the statistics of uploads by language.
7. Get the count of the videos that were blocked.
8. Other significant results.

Exclusion: videos that were blocked.
*This experiment was patterned after a concluded study by Prof. Michael Wesch, a social anthropologist. His lecture entitled "an Anthropological Introduction to Youtube" can be found in this link - http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/04/1462/

Presentation of Results: July 19, class time. Make sure the results are already uploaded in the blog.
Tally sheets used and the Excel file created will be submitted to the class adviser.

Learning Social Networks in 2010-2011

As I welcome the students in Social Computing this school year, I also challenge them not just to comply with the requirements of the course but to see more depth in the things we will do. For this school year we will engage in the study and trends of social media, issues that are facing social network subscribers like Facebook, how to localize social computing ideas in a more pragmatic and useful way for our Filipino society.

I will also be sharing some new and old experiments and the works contributed/done by the students this school year.