Module IV - Creation
From HLWIKI Canada
Go back to: LIBR 559M - Social Media for Information Professionals - Online Modules
Learning objectivesAfter completing module IV "Creation", you will be able to:
ActivitiesWeek I
Week IIIn week II of module IV, you have a lot of freedom to explore and create. You can decide to do one of the following activities, or create an activity of your own (Tuum est):
BackgroundOurs is a knowledge-creation world, and information professionals are often catalysts in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge in society. As purveyors of information, and experts at locating it, we are continually exploring new ways of creating and disseminating knowledge. The tried and tested methods of publishing and collecting monographs and peer-reviewed journals will continue to dominate our work but social media will be a part of the equation. What social media can do for us is create networks and encourage the sharing of ideas (and knowledge) among members. Social networking sites like Facebook encourage a more personal side to networking, instant messaging enables one-to-one communication, microblogs one-to-many communication, and blogs permit a more sustained exchange of ideas. Projects that utilize social media depend on the efforts put forward by participants. The social web, as it is currently conceived, relies on a number of users adding value to existing objects - think of Wikipedia or YouTube in the absence of participation. Even loading photographs to Flickr is a form of creation, requiring users to devise tags to describe photos. Other examples include bloggers who blog for free and vloggers who load video onto YouTube for other viewers. The open-source software movement is a rich source of participation and creation. In fact, new software tools are built by OSS advocates with little or no expectation of profit or remuneration. What motivates these people to create knowledge objects with others? It seems obvious that it is rewarding to connect with others and to achieve a collective result, and knowing that a new product may help someone in a developing country is highly motivating. Creating and making things have been shown to open pathways in the brain. These pathways are linked to learning and new ways of seeing. In fact, by reflecting on things we have made with others, we consider new ways of problem-solving. Unlike top-down hierarchies, social software encourage groups to seek out their own grassroot solutions to problems. And by making connections with people - be they friends, library users or colleagues - we declare our collective humanity while establishing our individual stake in a changing world. Some of the recent political demonstrations in cities like Iran and elsewhere suggest that the world is moving away from authoritarian cultures to one where citizens create their own forms of democracy. This shift to using new forms of collaboration can be seen in community-based initiatives; in education, there is a move away from traditional classrooms to one where creating, questioning and exploration are seen to be equally or more important than obeying authority figures. Read-Write and remix cultureSocial media promotes a "read-write culture" but also a remix culture. Social media allows its users to create art as readily as it is consumed, much of it for free. This, according to Lawrence Lessig in his book "Remix", is what comprises the new hybrid economy, one that combines the profit motives of traditional business with the "sharing economy" on the web, such as what we see at Wikipedia and YouTube. The hybrid economy is now more prominent in every creative realm from news to music, and social media to education. In fact, copyright expert Lawrence Lessig argues for an open sharing of art as resources to share rather than commodities to be sold. Lessig’s book Remix is available under a Creative Commons License and Chris Anderson's Free: the future of a radical price. 2009 In Free, Anderson implies that free doesn't mean 'completely free'. The promise of free brings people into your website and then things are sold around it. What seems clear for information professionals is that the world of publishing has been destabilized by the remix and open-free movements. Managing information in the digital era now means that we must understand some of the processes underlying the experimentation: and work to shape, create and integrate textual, visual, spatial and audio elements for our users. As Baildon et al (2008) suggest, the building blocks of information fluency now involve new literacies that are social, fluid and ever-changing. Large-scale sharing and knowledge-creation reflect changes in how people communicate, connect with other people and access information. It is axiomatic that the information workers of tomorrow will "manage their own productivity and seek and structure collaborations from around the world". See CrowdVine and Ning as examples of creating your own social networks for learning, conferences or networking. Associated memes
Related concepts
Acts of creation
Final reflectionsThe creation of new products and services in web 2.0 is ultimately secondary to other larger issues such as making new friends, creating connections and new knowledge. In information organizations, this might translate into encouraging creative responses to problems that we are currently dealing with or have yet to encounter. How can social media be used by information professionals to find creative solutions? Other questions to consider, blog or reflect on
Other exploration
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