http://www.knowandnetwork.org/francesbell/weblog/28.html

This article indicates that women are driven out of public spaces online by sexual threats. 

"Robert Scoble, a technology blogger who took a week off in solidarity with Sierra, said women have told him that harassment is a "disincentive" to participate online. That, he said, will affect their job prospects in the male-dominated tech industry. "If women aren't willing to show up for networking events, either offline or online, then they're never going to be included in the industry," he said."

Interestingly, this response puts the onus on women to keep participating despite harassment, to save their job prospects. Another case shows us that women's job prospects may be damaged through no action of their own.

Christopher Sessums pointed out  a recent case of a young woman denied an education degree because of a photo, entitled 'Drunken Pirate', on her MySpace. 

 

So how are women (and men)  to deal with the prospect of some future employer googling their name only to find evidence of youthful indiscretion, or malicious lies.  As individuals we could try to be more discreet - as employers, we could refrain from cyberstalking.  What do you think?

http://emerge.elgg.org/francesbell/weblog/249.html

In my first post here, I wondered out loud about managing 2 elgg blogs (I now have three - 2 project and one personal).  Josie helpfully told me how to use feeds to feed posts from one to another.  During the experimentation phase, I overdid the feeds into what might be called a vicious circle where I had posts ping-ponging backwards and forwards from one blog to another.  I have done some deleting of posts and feeds and hope I have got to a situation where my two project blogs feed (public) posts into my personal blog.

If you spot any more duplicate posts, you'll know the full extent of my technical incompetence. 

Following on from an inhouse event at Salford. we are having a discussion on the use of videos in education at the CABWEB HELP network .  You are welcome to join but will need to create an account to post.

In browsing around for videos, I discovered that my own university has a youtube account where it has posted promotional videos. Also students have posted their views on accommodation, and some of their own work.

 

http://emerge.elgg.org/francesbell/weblog/298.html

Danah Boyd has posted on a  panel presentations to the US Internet Caucus Advisory Committee.  She contributed a qualitative data perspective to complement the quantitative perspective from David Finkelhor (Director of Crimes Against Children Research Center), Amanda Lenhart (PEW), and Michele Ybarra (President of Internet Solutions for Kids).  The video of the panel discussion  is well worth watching.

They present a powerful case for adult knowledge of how the Internet is used and how social networking works, so that they can engage with young people rather than employing knee jerk reactions.  This data revealed the crossover between life on- and off-line.  There were also positive examples of mixed age interactions online (e.g. in World of Warcraft guilds) to complement the stereotype (thankfully fairly rare) of predation online.

Educators, parents, youth workers and mental health workers could all benefit from watching this so tag it and pass it on please.

http://www.knowandnetwork.org/francesbell/weblog/29.html

Rebecca Attwood says that

• the average female academic in a Campaigning for Modern Universities institution earned £1,368 more than her Russell Group counterpart.
  

http://www.knowandnetwork.org/francesbell/weblog/30.html

I was directed to this list of recordings at EdTEchLive and noticed this interview of John Seely Brown, formerly of Xerox Parc.

The whole thing is worth listening to but if you are short of time, just listen to the last few minutes. 

At the end of this interview when asked to include anything missed out, he reflected on the learning that many did to form foundations of later formal learning that was based on ‘tinkering’. His own example was his tinkering with cars in the garage and how his academic parents did not value this.  Around the mid 80s, products such as cars became ‘cognitively impenetrable’, impossible or illegal to tinker with them, creating a generation who were not tinkerers.  More recently the web has re-enabled tinkering of software, music, etc. for another generation.  One difference between this tinkering and its predecessor is that it is not gendered, it is accessible and ‘permitted’ for men and women.  As Seely Brown says ‘it cross-cuts the genders’.

That is an interesting idea - does it resonate with your own experience?

http://emerge.elgg.org/francesbell/weblog/312.html

Well, I thought I would share this very Web 2.0 cartoon with Emerge.

Thanks Hugh McLeod. 

http://emerge.elgg.org/francesbell/weblog/315.html

It fascinates me how people manage mutiple blogs, and I have been watching what the great and the good do (you know who you are;-) ) 

I have already blogged here (see Josie's comments on how to push feeds with elgg) and here about feeds and blogs.  Alex Hardman asked me to post about how to set up feeds, so I thought I would take a step back to think about and draw diagrams of two different approaches.  Hoping this will start a discussion on the pros and cons of these (and other possible) approaches.

 

This is the way I am currently managing my original Eduspaces blog and two 'project' blogs I have started recently.  The two project blogs feed into my main blog, so I won't lose them in my archives even if the project mini-blogospheres morph into something else.   When I want to blog something, I make a decision on its relevance to the projects.

Of course it's still not very satisfactory as the comments are in two places and unconnected.  See what I mean in this diagram of the common 'mirroring' approach.

 

So what do you all think about the mutiple blog thing? 

http://www.knowandnetwork.org/francesbell/weblog/34.html

today beryl and i made a great new contact with susanne brearley from microsoft. she will be joining up here at kan. can you tell that i am posting this from my mobile phone?