Group writing sound somehow tempting like Group Trip.
I became curious and put the text “Group Writing” in Google.
The popularity of Group Writing was amazing.
415.000.000 findings!!
Top five “random”
1. The following are samples of group writing activities offered by the Center
for Instruction Development and Research at University of Washington at Seattle.
2. Sean Banville's Blog Paired and Group Writing Activity:
20 benefits of paired group writing.
3. British Council BBC / TRY activities /
Written by Nicola Crowley, EFL teacher, Israel
4. eHow: How to Start a Writing Group
5. ProBlogger: Group Writing Project;
What to say?
It seems that there are in the internet discussion platforms: just for fun, teaching, school education, for business and may other reasons like scientific discussions.
The blogging is tool for getting something new happen or what.
Look this:
http://www.creativity-portal.com/howto/writing/collaborations.critiques.html
Right way you find yourself on the market place! Let shoppaile City Deals or improve your Brain!
Of cause you can find good blogging platforms.
This is the End
This time
Erkki
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Can distance be a blessing?
In the design, implementation and use of groupware the greatest challenge is often referred to be the absence of "group". The tools are considered gawky and inefficient, because asynchronous communication and virtual environments fail to create the sense and atmosphere of "real teamwork". Many of the latest tools aim in better engagement and interaction of users. I am asking, is unprofound communication necessarily a bad thing?
People are various, and so are teams. The process of teamwork is usually far from ideal. Work groups are not social groups in the same sense than families or lads. Relationships are superficial, motivation varies and different people may have different goals. Teamwork can be a wearing experience.
My writing has two different points: Firstly, could the use of groupware and separated spatiality work better in some situations just because it gives us more personal space? Secondly, is the research and development of groupware too biased towards "the ideal" group-work instead of "the real" group-work?
People are various, and so are teams. The process of teamwork is usually far from ideal. Work groups are not social groups in the same sense than families or lads. Relationships are superficial, motivation varies and different people may have different goals. Teamwork can be a wearing experience.
My writing has two different points: Firstly, could the use of groupware and separated spatiality work better in some situations just because it gives us more personal space? Secondly, is the research and development of groupware too biased towards "the ideal" group-work instead of "the real" group-work?
Does social media help people being in contact with each other?
I've often heard poeple saying how the use of social media help them to stay in touch with their friends. Sharing your thoughts and commenting on other's pictures etc. might sound like you're actually in contact with them. But I think there are different sides to this.
On one hand it is definately useful to stay in touch with people far away, say for a brother staying abroad or something similar. It's always nice to hear and see what they're doing there. And since it might not be convenient to for example call when one is several time zones away, just leaving a message is easy and will most often be received quite quickly.
On the other hand, just leaving a "hi, how u doin?" message on one's wall, is a cheap way to actually avoid contact with someone. Why bother calling someone or setting up a date, when you can just say "I poked you facebook". This kind of behaviour is quite normal, or at least in my experience it is. It might seem as the interaction between certain people might be on increase, but in reality, it's just random messages once a day. I wouldn't call that interaction, since it's quite rare to actually even have a conversation like this.
The actual time that people spend together doing something decreases exponentially when everyone can just poke each other on facebook. One could say that if people don't bother to actually meet with someone in person, they haven't had any intrest doing so in the first place, but I think this is not the case. People just find the way of least resistance and be happy with it, even though they might enjoy some other ways of interaction even more.
How could we improve the ways how people actually get together to do stuff, while at the same time putting our effort into making it as easy as possible to stay away from everyone else? People don't really know what they want, they just take what they're offered.
On one hand it is definately useful to stay in touch with people far away, say for a brother staying abroad or something similar. It's always nice to hear and see what they're doing there. And since it might not be convenient to for example call when one is several time zones away, just leaving a message is easy and will most often be received quite quickly.
On the other hand, just leaving a "hi, how u doin?" message on one's wall, is a cheap way to actually avoid contact with someone. Why bother calling someone or setting up a date, when you can just say "I poked you facebook". This kind of behaviour is quite normal, or at least in my experience it is. It might seem as the interaction between certain people might be on increase, but in reality, it's just random messages once a day. I wouldn't call that interaction, since it's quite rare to actually even have a conversation like this.
The actual time that people spend together doing something decreases exponentially when everyone can just poke each other on facebook. One could say that if people don't bother to actually meet with someone in person, they haven't had any intrest doing so in the first place, but I think this is not the case. People just find the way of least resistance and be happy with it, even though they might enjoy some other ways of interaction even more.
How could we improve the ways how people actually get together to do stuff, while at the same time putting our effort into making it as easy as possible to stay away from everyone else? People don't really know what they want, they just take what they're offered.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Common ground in IRC
Monk talked in his paper[1] about common ground and defined it as:
"a proposition p is only common ground if all the people conversing know p and they all knowthat they all know p."
How could this be applied to IRC conversations?
I and most of my friend run our IRC-clients in a screen, so much of the conversation takes place when we're not actually there following it. So let's say someone talks about thing A and I'm not there at the time to read it. When I later come back online, is thing A common ground to me? Of course, with screen, I could read all the backlog, and know about thing A, but having almost twenty different channels open all the time, I rarely read all the backlog. On the other hand, my friends probably know that I don't necessarily read everything discussed while I was away, but how can you know when something is common ground and when it isn't? Usually you don't even know who is really there, who isn't and who's just following conversation quietly. Interesting things to ponder.
References:
[1]Monk, A. (2009) Common ground in electronically mediated conversation. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics #1. Morgan & Claypool publishers.
"a proposition p is only common ground if all the people conversing know p and they all knowthat they all know p."
How could this be applied to IRC conversations?
I and most of my friend run our IRC-clients in a screen, so much of the conversation takes place when we're not actually there following it. So let's say someone talks about thing A and I'm not there at the time to read it. When I later come back online, is thing A common ground to me? Of course, with screen, I could read all the backlog, and know about thing A, but having almost twenty different channels open all the time, I rarely read all the backlog. On the other hand, my friends probably know that I don't necessarily read everything discussed while I was away, but how can you know when something is common ground and when it isn't? Usually you don't even know who is really there, who isn't and who's just following conversation quietly. Interesting things to ponder.
References:
[1]Monk, A. (2009) Common ground in electronically mediated conversation. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics #1. Morgan & Claypool publishers.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Location awareness in instant messaging, how important it is?
I was thinking about the location information or awareness in instant messaging. By location awareness i mean the information about physical location of chatting partners. Is it important or beneficial to know where people are during chatting, how it affects to communication?
Instant messaging client i'm familiar with has some functionality to indicate users location. This is naturally possible by setting status message, but has also automatic functionality to track different locations. For example when logging in to university network, chat client notices change in network and asks to label the current location. Labels can be like "office", "home", "university"
and so on. When logging again to university, given label "At university" can appear automatically to status information.
But is it meaningful to know the location of chat participants? I have noticed for example that when working at home, there is actually less chat messages from colleagues if location is visible. It seems that in this particular case people actually hesitates a bit contacting compared to "Office" -location. Difference is not huge, but clearly noticeable.
In previous case it would actually be better not to publish location to encourage more communication. (or vice versa, "home" -location seems good way to have less interruptions without need to block all messages)
"at Office" -label beside people name communicates that it's actually ok to send message or give a call. If location is set to something else, the first question arising seems to be if it ok to start chat then? "In the train" may give some context for communication, or reason why the answers are taking so long due poor reception. On the other hand when status isset to "busy" it's clear signal that it's not good time for chatting.
So .. My opinion is that in typical work related one to one chat taking place in single time zone visibility of location information is not so hugely important. Location may give some context for communication, but may be also the source for slight confusion.
Do you know IM communication scenarios where it's absolutely good to know the location of chat partner?
Instant messaging client i'm familiar with has some functionality to indicate users location. This is naturally possible by setting status message, but has also automatic functionality to track different locations. For example when logging in to university network, chat client notices change in network and asks to label the current location. Labels can be like "office", "home", "university"
and so on. When logging again to university, given label "At university" can appear automatically to status information.
But is it meaningful to know the location of chat participants? I have noticed for example that when working at home, there is actually less chat messages from colleagues if location is visible. It seems that in this particular case people actually hesitates a bit contacting compared to "Office" -location. Difference is not huge, but clearly noticeable.
In previous case it would actually be better not to publish location to encourage more communication. (or vice versa, "home" -location seems good way to have less interruptions without need to block all messages)
"at Office" -label beside people name communicates that it's actually ok to send message or give a call. If location is set to something else, the first question arising seems to be if it ok to start chat then? "In the train" may give some context for communication, or reason why the answers are taking so long due poor reception. On the other hand when status isset to "busy" it's clear signal that it's not good time for chatting.
So .. My opinion is that in typical work related one to one chat taking place in single time zone visibility of location information is not so hugely important. Location may give some context for communication, but may be also the source for slight confusion.
Do you know IM communication scenarios where it's absolutely good to know the location of chat partner?
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Some problems with text chats
Even if chat and instant messaging programs are popular, there are some issues that limit their utility especially if they are used for group meetings or complex discussions. Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter introduce in their paper five main problems with text chat.
1) Lack of links between people and what they say
It can be hard to differentiate persons and their messages particularly if there are many speakers in same chat room. It has been tried to solve this problem for example by using different color or font for each participant.
2) No visibility of listening-in-progress
It is not possible to know if other participant is listening in text chat or when that is exactly happening. Even though I think that for example the states available/away could tell something if somebody is listening or not, but in reality that doesn’t tell anything about that. Somebody can be available and same time away from the computer and the other participants can’t know that.
3) Lack of visibility of turns-in-progress
In chats, it is not always visible who is writing currently a message. The turns are transmitted when user has pressed enter-key. I think it is very important to have some visual cue of someone’s writing process for helping to take turns at right moment. Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter mention that “[name] is typing a message” at the bottom of the window of Messenger doesn’t solve the problem, because other users can’t see exactly what others are writing until the enter-key is pressed. In group meetings that could be useful to see what someone else is writing, or at least to know if someone is writing anything. But on the other hand I think it is enough information to know “[name] is typing a message”, because one good side of text chats is that there is time to think and edit the answer if user wants that.
4) Lack of control over turn positioning
If there are many participants in same chat room, the links between turns and replies are easily mixed. This problem comes even bigger, if there is lack of visibility of turns-in-progress. In my opinion this is one of the biggest problems when using chats for group meeting purposes and it is difficult to follow conversation if others are speaking same time about one subject and others about something else.
5) Lack of useful recordings and social context
Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter describe in their paper that in many chat rooms their content and discussions are not recorded. There is no history about conversations; also if there are history logs used, they are missing many times timing cues. I think it is very important that chat has a log and it is possible to return to that information later.
References:
[Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter, 2000] Marc Smith, J.J. Cadiz and Byron Burkhalter, Conversation trees and threaded chats. Proc. CSCW 2000, 97-105.
1) Lack of links between people and what they say
It can be hard to differentiate persons and their messages particularly if there are many speakers in same chat room. It has been tried to solve this problem for example by using different color or font for each participant.
2) No visibility of listening-in-progress
It is not possible to know if other participant is listening in text chat or when that is exactly happening. Even though I think that for example the states available/away could tell something if somebody is listening or not, but in reality that doesn’t tell anything about that. Somebody can be available and same time away from the computer and the other participants can’t know that.
3) Lack of visibility of turns-in-progress
In chats, it is not always visible who is writing currently a message. The turns are transmitted when user has pressed enter-key. I think it is very important to have some visual cue of someone’s writing process for helping to take turns at right moment. Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter mention that “[name] is typing a message” at the bottom of the window of Messenger doesn’t solve the problem, because other users can’t see exactly what others are writing until the enter-key is pressed. In group meetings that could be useful to see what someone else is writing, or at least to know if someone is writing anything. But on the other hand I think it is enough information to know “[name] is typing a message”, because one good side of text chats is that there is time to think and edit the answer if user wants that.
4) Lack of control over turn positioning
If there are many participants in same chat room, the links between turns and replies are easily mixed. This problem comes even bigger, if there is lack of visibility of turns-in-progress. In my opinion this is one of the biggest problems when using chats for group meeting purposes and it is difficult to follow conversation if others are speaking same time about one subject and others about something else.
5) Lack of useful recordings and social context
Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter describe in their paper that in many chat rooms their content and discussions are not recorded. There is no history about conversations; also if there are history logs used, they are missing many times timing cues. I think it is very important that chat has a log and it is possible to return to that information later.
References:
[Smith, Cadiz & Burkhalter, 2000] Marc Smith, J.J. Cadiz and Byron Burkhalter, Conversation trees and threaded chats. Proc. CSCW 2000, 97-105.
Gmail Filtering / Group filtering ??!
Hello all,
I was interested in the e-mail filtering in Gmail and find out that it fits to purposes very well.
It is use full to test and then see how effective the e-mail filtering is ;).
Filters are one of the coolest and my favorite feature that Gmail has to offer. If you setup Filters properly, they can provide real ease in email management.
Filters help you saving time and space when it comes to unwanted emails in your inbox, and introduce you to multi-functionality of Gmail.
As per my understanding no other email service provides feature like Filters.
Filter has two parts in first one you setup a query and in second part you decide what to do with mails that showed up as a result or even in future.
Filters can be little frustrating if you don’t know how to make them work properly. In this article I will try to explain Filters, and how they can make your life easier by cutting many jobs to be done manually. And the multiple address filtering is impossible.
How to test!
Click on Settings Link on top right corner of your Gmail account.
Click on Filters tab to open it, if you don’t setup any filters yet then it’s going to be a blank page.
Find yourself create a new filter link; click it to create a new filter.
You will be taken to next page; here you can see five input boxes labeled as From, To, Subject, Has the Words, Doesn’t have, one check box labeled as Has Attachment and three buttons labeled as Cancel, Test Search and Next Step.
This is it; now you have to build some query and test it to ensure its working properly.
From Field:
The From Field is to deal with mails you getting from one or more source. For instance if you are getting lots of forwarded mails from different email id(s), you can put those email id(s) in From Field and do whatever you want to do with them. You can assign Label, Archive or even delete without even looking at them.
To Field:
This field can be used for both incoming and outgoing mails. If you want to create a filter for mail addressing, this is a field where you have to add your id. If you want to handle outgoing mails to one or more ids you have to add that particular id here. When this step is done you can Label, Archive, Forward oreven delete it.
Subject Field:
This field works as a search box, you can add word(s) or phrase and Gmail will keep a check on all mails.
Has the words and Doesn’t have Field:
You can add word(s) or phrase in this field and Gmail will search for given query in all mails.
Has Attachment Check box:
Click and you will be able to see only mails that have attachments with them.
When you have your query built simply click Test Search to see they are working right or not. When you are done click Next Step button to proceed. Now you need to indicate an action to be implemented on the results. Gmail offers you seven different actions that you can apply. Since these are checkboxes, you can have one or more actions applied to the searched results. Furthermore, the actions are executed not only on new incoming messages but also on older ones residing in your inbox.
Actions to be chosen for Gmail filters
* Skip the Inbox: archive the email message
* Mark as read: marks the email message as read - does not appear in bold in your Inbox
* Star it
* Apply the label: Select and apply a label to the email message
* Forward it to: forwards the email message to another account that you specify
* Delete it: deletes the email message
* Never send it to Spam
Final Words
If you are subscriber of any mailing list you can make filter of it in just one click. This is what you have to do, open that message, click on show detail button, their you can see option of mailing list. In front of it you can see a link Filter messages from this mailing list, click and you will directed to filter page, here you can test search and then you are done with it. Do remember you can create Labels for newly created filter right there.
Erkki
I was interested in the e-mail filtering in Gmail and find out that it fits to purposes very well.
It is use full to test and then see how effective the e-mail filtering is ;).
Filters are one of the coolest and my favorite feature that Gmail has to offer. If you setup Filters properly, they can provide real ease in email management.
Filters help you saving time and space when it comes to unwanted emails in your inbox, and introduce you to multi-functionality of Gmail.
As per my understanding no other email service provides feature like Filters.
Filter has two parts in first one you setup a query and in second part you decide what to do with mails that showed up as a result or even in future.
Filters can be little frustrating if you don’t know how to make them work properly. In this article I will try to explain Filters, and how they can make your life easier by cutting many jobs to be done manually. And the multiple address filtering is impossible.
How to test!
Click on Settings Link on top right corner of your Gmail account.
Click on Filters tab to open it, if you don’t setup any filters yet then it’s going to be a blank page.
Find yourself create a new filter link; click it to create a new filter.
You will be taken to next page; here you can see five input boxes labeled as From, To, Subject, Has the Words, Doesn’t have, one check box labeled as Has Attachment and three buttons labeled as Cancel, Test Search and Next Step.
This is it; now you have to build some query and test it to ensure its working properly.
From Field:
The From Field is to deal with mails you getting from one or more source. For instance if you are getting lots of forwarded mails from different email id(s), you can put those email id(s) in From Field and do whatever you want to do with them. You can assign Label, Archive or even delete without even looking at them.
To Field:
This field can be used for both incoming and outgoing mails. If you want to create a filter for mail addressing, this is a field where you have to add your id. If you want to handle outgoing mails to one or more ids you have to add that particular id here. When this step is done you can Label, Archive, Forward oreven delete it.
Subject Field:
This field works as a search box, you can add word(s) or phrase and Gmail will keep a check on all mails.
Has the words and Doesn’t have Field:
You can add word(s) or phrase in this field and Gmail will search for given query in all mails.
Has Attachment Check box:
Click and you will be able to see only mails that have attachments with them.
When you have your query built simply click Test Search to see they are working right or not. When you are done click Next Step button to proceed. Now you need to indicate an action to be implemented on the results. Gmail offers you seven different actions that you can apply. Since these are checkboxes, you can have one or more actions applied to the searched results. Furthermore, the actions are executed not only on new incoming messages but also on older ones residing in your inbox.
Actions to be chosen for Gmail filters
* Skip the Inbox: archive the email message
* Mark as read: marks the email message as read - does not appear in bold in your Inbox
* Star it
* Apply the label: Select and apply a label to the email message
* Forward it to: forwards the email message to another account that you specify
* Delete it: deletes the email message
* Never send it to Spam
Final Words
If you are subscriber of any mailing list you can make filter of it in just one click. This is what you have to do, open that message, click on show detail button, their you can see option of mailing list. In front of it you can see a link Filter messages from this mailing list, click and you will directed to filter page, here you can test search and then you are done with it. Do remember you can create Labels for newly created filter right there.
Erkki
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