fromcommunication

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Select the type of brainstorming you want to perform in Second Life by using Brainflowing.

Select the type of brainstorming you want to perform in Second Life by using Brainflowing.

Brainflowing has been updated, by including a menu that permits choosing the type of brainstorming we want to perform depending on the number of prims we have available in the land where we develop the activity and. Now users can decide the prims they will use with the tool, taking in mind the prims that they have available in their land or in the land where they use the tool. Thus, person who will conduct the brainstorming, after selecting in the menu the number of prims he or she is interested on using, must indicate to participants how many words they can use for giving utterance to their ideas in the board.

This menu that was incorporated to Brainflowing helps users to understand easily the relation between the number of words we use during the brainstorming activity and the prims we need to have available in the land where the activity takes place.

Though people have prims enough in their land, they can select an option with few prims in order to make participants to express their ideas in few words. This is highly recommended once time we have shared general ideas about the topic we are discussing and we want to polish them.

Finally, we want to point that, by using the option that will allow us to choose the number of prims that will be used in the tool, we can select the 0 prims option. Selecting this option is very adequate if we want to have our Brainflowing displayed in our land but we want people not to drag notecards on it.

By contrary, if we are interested in that people drag notecards into the board, we must select the number of prims that will permit them doing it.

Apart from this new feature, now Brainflowing display more quickly the notecards that users drag into it. Notecards are displayed on the board just instantaneously. Last but not least, in order to facilitate the management of the tool, in these new version the buttoms of the options that can be used by the owner of the tool are highlighted in yellow. ("email the brainstorming", "save your board in a prim before taking it", "add prims")

Enjoy it and take advantage of the characteristics of Second Life environment for brainstorming. Brainflowing is available here

Bibliography for guessing possible uses of Brainflowing.

Herver, G., El Kamel, L. and Rigaux-Bricmont, B. (2010) Entretien de groupe dans Second Life, Recherches Qualitative , edited by the Association pour la Recherche Qualitative (ARQ), Quebec, Canada.Vol. 29, number, 1, Spring, “Entretiens de Groupe: Concepts, Usages et Ancrages” Coordinated by: François Guillemette, Jason Luckerhoff et Colette Baribeaue.
Videos about the tool.

Draceina Pinion made this video about one of the first versions of Brainflowing.

Wednesday, workshop at Second Life by Yuna Brunn and Draceina Pinion

Wednesday 30th June 2010, 5:30 PDT-

Yuna Bruun will do a workshop about Linden Second Life Language and Draceina Pinion will do demonstration of crossword tools.

Place: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Galleria/29/175/24

Galeria Szepanski

Take advantage of this free event for beginning to understand Second Life as an evironment for creative activities (educational, artistical, etcetera). If you do not have still an avatar, this event can be an excellent reason to create one.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Theories of the Information Society, by Frank Wester, 2002

Theories of the Information Society, by Frank Wester, 2002

Quality and Quantity

"Reviewing these varying gedinitions of the information society, what becomes clear is that they are either or both underveloped or imprecise. Whether its is a technological, ecobomic, occupational, spatial or cultural conception, we are left with highly problematic notions of what constitutes, and how to distinguish, an information society.

It is important that we remain aware of these difficulties thought as a heuristic device, the term information society has some value in exploring features of the contemporary world, it is too inexact to be acceptable as a definitive term. For this reason, throughout this book, though I shall on ocassion use the concept and acknowledge that information plays a critical role in the present age, I shall express suspicion as regards information society scenarios and remain sceptical of the view that information has become the major distinguishing feature of our times.

For the moment, however, I want to raise some further difficulties with the language of the information society. The first problem concerns the quantitative versus qualitative measures to wich I have already alluded. My earlier concern was chiefly that quaantitative approaches failed to distinguish more strategically significant information activity from that which was routine and low-level and that this homogenisation was misleading. Here I want to re-raise the quality/ quantity issue in so far as it bears upon the question of whether the information society marks a break with previous sorts of society" (page 21)

"One ought not to imagine that theoretical knowledge´s primacy is limited to leading-edge innovations. Indeed, it is hard to think of any technological applications in whic theory is not a prequisite of development. For instance, road repair, house construction, sewage disposal or motor car manofracture are each premised on known theoretical principles of material durability, structural laws, toxins, energy consuption and much more" (27)