KAN Flyer

Here is the text from the Know and Network project flyer - feel free to circulate this, as long you include contact details. 

The KAN (Know and Network): women in IT project, funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) under the HE ESF Objective 3: Solutions to gender discrimination, is a twelve month project that will commence in January 2007 which will be run in the Information Systems Group, Salford Business School of the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK.

This project has evolved from knowledge gained from the ESF national Women in IT (WINIT) project which uncovered various barriers to women in IT throughout England.  The findings included issues related to the severe under-representation of women in IT that can lead to isolation with a lack of access to mentoring and business and support networks, coupled with a hostile culture which does not value the technical and other skills of women. This has resulted in women in the IT sector facing obstacles in advancing their careers and therefore often taking their skills elsewhere. 

 

WINIT reported that those working in IT SMEs or where there was no structured human resources (HR) function needed a 'one stop shop' for information on legislation, policies and good practice so discrimination at work could be overcome.  Our aim is to counter this trend by providing business and social networking tools via a knowledge portal for this rare and valuable group of women in IT in England, enabling them to link up and work together to overcome such barriers.

 

In 2003 it was estimated that there were 151,000 women working in IT occupations, with a noticeable scarcity of female senior managers, compared to 834,000 men (Miller, 2004) therefore calculating that women account for only 1 in 5 of the IT workforce in Britain (e-skills UK/Gartner 2004).    

 

Many women reported to the WINIT team that networking opportunities were largely available only in London, yet access to networking is a significant way in which IT professionals can develop their careers.  This lack of access has a detrimental effect on pay, rewards and progression for women in IT and acts as a push factor resulting in women leaving the IT sector.  Women reported to the Women in Northwest IT (WINWIT) project team that there was indeed a need for and having access to a ‘networking community’ which would be beneficial to all women in the IT sector in order to enhance business opportunities and professional advancement:

 

“…she feels frustrated for not networking and socialising more whilst employed saying, ‘if I socialised a lot more I would know a lot more people and I could use  that knowledge to network to get back into the industry’.  She suspects her previous lack of networking has affected her current ability to find employment” (Jill, WINWIT interviewee, age: 30-35 years).

 

“…she maintains that being based in the North-West of England has been restrictive in career terms, saying, ‘I think I would have got to where I am now a good few years earlier had I been more able to liaise and socialise with senior male executives, whereas 200 miles away I am out of sight out of mind’” (Mary, WINIT interviewee, age: 40-45 years).

 

Acknowledging this need for information in an easily accessible format and location and the need for women to network for mentoring, support and career development reasons, the KAN project will undertake research to develop a knowledge 'diversity direct' portal for women in IT and to provide virtual networking tools to establish an on-line forum available to women in IT throughout England, regardless of location or company size.

 

The ESF funded regional project ‘Disappearing Women: North-West ICT’ (DW-NW-ICT) researching into why so women leave the sector vowing never to return have utilised weblogs as an alternative research tool by inviting discussion regarding this phenomenon.  This was found to be an additional and useful way of collecting extra data because of the time limitations of the project.  Moreover many women in IT join networking groups both 'face-to-face' such as the DTI Intellect Women in IT forum and use on-line communities such as 'women of web2.com' and 'geek girls'.  The KAN (Know and network): women in IT project will establish virtual networking tools for all women in IT whether motivations are for support, social or business contact, mentoring or career development.

 

By the end of the year long project it is aimed that a minimum of 50 women in IT beneficiaries will be utilising these tools enabling evaluation of online resources and tools as a means of retaining and developing women in IT.   It is also aimed that the resources provided will be sustained after the project has finished and be of lasting benefit to women in IT throughout England, thus enabling valuable skills to be retained by the national IT sector and in addition, through the virtual networking tools,  will trigger off the snowballing of the networking and mentoring links.

 

 

For further information on the KAN: women in IT project:

Frances Bell: f.bell@salford.ac.uk

Telephone: 0161 295 4254

     

  N.B. This is the text from our KAN project flyer, courtesy of Beryl Burns

Have you seen this beautiful video?

I first saw this on Nancy White's blog where I had an interesting little dialogue with her. I was bowled over when I watched the video by its elegance and simplicity.  Then it occurred to me - What would I see with a screen reader?  I should soon have the answer to that question as I have sent the link to a blind colleague but I suspect that the answer will be - Not much.

The video talks about separating form and content but doesn't as far as I can tell.

Images and video are enhancing sharing of ideas and arguments but perhaps not for everyone. Reflecting on Michael Wesch's  ideas in the video, who is us?

He has started a blog about it so I'll go and ask him

 

 

 I am currently writing about Theorising 'Web 2.0' (initially in education but will broaden later). Obviously I started with the O'Reilly definition (that has a very interesting starting point) and am using that to critique whether or not there is a clear boundary around What is and is not Web 2.0?

 

 Erik Schonfeld used the categories Aggregators, Mashups, Webware, Social media, Social networks, Internet TV when he created his fascinating (though difficult to read) map of Web 2.0 around the world

Another approach I am taking is to look at a range of applications and services that would claim to be Web 2.0 and look at features that they mainly have in common:

v  User profile

v  Contact management

v  Configurable ‘look and feel’ (using CSS themes and skins)

v  User content generation (e.g. text, audio, images, videos)

v  Tagging (labels for content)

v  Privacy control features

v  Ease of integration with other web content (using links and RSS feeds)

 

Collage of Web 2.0 logos from mmmonica's photostream

I have just been reading Josie Fraser’s ideas on dynamic or deep personalisation that she spoke of in this blog posting

“Dynamic personalisation refers to what we regard as learner-led personalisation: support and acknowledgement for the learner to create, write, collaborate and direct content and activity within the contexts of their own choosing. In this vein, Amazon users produce their own lists and reviews and comment on others. They can complete profiles, up load photographs and choose to connect with other users. Active participation is characteristically participatory, self directed and community based. We define the facilitation of dynamic personalisation as “production, reception and relationships are supported by the system but determined by the user - the ability to create original or derivative works, to collaborate, form networks and connections via the user’s choice of applications, locations, and platforms.”

Superficially, many Web 2.0 applications do permit user (learner) creation of content and collaboration, and where they allow integration (such a showing picture that is linked to image stored elsewhere) there is some degree to which user can choose contexts.  Open Source software communities offer participation in development but to what degree do Web 2.0 services allow the ‘community’ to determine production and features other than by survival of the fittest and market forces? Who mashes up?

Going beyond the list of features above, Mike Wesch’s list of things (from the ubiquitous video)that we need to rethink can give us some ideas on theorising and critiquing Web 2.0 namely copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce (not to mention love, family and ourselves).  For example, the lenses of copyright and authorship could help us to analyse the Facebook Terms of Use relating to User Content

 “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire.”

The words perpetual and expire seem to be in contradiction with each other.

Christopher Sessum’s take was much more grounded in education itself in this post.  Also Nancy White has a seminal series of posts on Blog Community that link in nicely to learning.

Anyway, enough of this and back to writing my paper.

 

This week I am very busy and really struggling to finish a paper for the ALT deadline tomorrow 2300.... But I have joined in the explode fun and games.

As usual, I struggle to make sense of the geography, but I am getting there.  Here is an image of my comment wall.

 

If ou wnat to join the fun, look into bottom right hand corner and click to join. 

Good news is - we are trying out elgg for our Know and Network project and it is looking good. Next step try Elgg-Media Wiki integration.

Thanks to Beryl and Mark.