Go back to: LIBR 559M - Social Media for Information Professionals - Online Modules
Learning objectives
After completing module V "Aggregation", you will be able to:
- Discuss aggregation in social media, and list key tracking technologies
- Develop plans to integrate social media into information literacies and practices
- Create aggregating mechanisms to bring information together for user groups
- Develop coordinated strategies and approaches to communicate with our user groups online
- Examine the challenges around merging legacy systems and new media in information organizations
Week I
- Watch Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch's talk about attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter and other emerging technologies with his students to create a portal called A Portal to Media Literacy. “It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,” he explains. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.”
- Examine a few of the following aggregators, tracking tools, dashboards, RSS readers:
Week II
- Explore networks that aggregate information, such as Ning http://ning.com 'educational social networking'
- Tools such as Ning do not suffer from the unscholarly reputation of FaceBook
- Is this what librarians and information professionals need to aggregate services for users?
- Look at ePortfolio platforms; Mahara - http://mahara.org/ ; VoiceThread - http://voicethread.com
- Librarians gather, organize, use classification systems, integrate sources of information. They also see patterns, and make connections between information and their users.
- How might the tools of aggregation be used by information organizations in delivering innovative digital services?
Background
"...the ability to aggregate all content authored by a user
into a single stream so that friends, family, or other interested parties can see
the user’s public activities wherever they occur [is key to the social web]..." - Toward a People Web
Aggregation is an increasingly important activity in managing information in an era of social media. Increasingly, a wide variety of sites, RSS readers, learning sites and platforms are designed to accomplish aggregation. Ideally, when social media users maintain a number of accounts and a long list of services and applications, aggregators bring this content together in a central location. Second Life is said to be working on this type of consolidation so that applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and delicious would work seamlessly from within one account and user environment.
There are other issues to consider with aggregated content. First, users do not have to learn yet another interface when they connect to RSS readers and other tools that bring together syndicated content. One of the most useful aspects of aggregated platforms is that they provide one-stop shopping in real (even virtual) time. These applications do not have to be monitored and can be viewed within one website or browser.
Even though aggregating digital content is useful (and perhaps even necessary), how do we continue to locate useful, newer content outside of our regular networks and spheres of influence? Rather than surfing for information across the web, what about searching from within social networks themselves? Some Twitter users believe that information there is filtered through a sieve of intelligence, acting as its own aggregator similar to Facebook or FriendFeed.
Where does Google fit in here? Perhaps the future of web search will be less about keywords (or, even controlled terms) or how many other pages link to a retrieved file of information. The key to search in the future may be more about how to forage real time content in our personal networks rather than searching across the web using Google and Yahoo.
Integrated, personal learning environments
Integrated personal learning environments (and virtual learning environments) are increasingly needed to manage the flood of information that is produced by using social media. What is needed is a facility to access, aggregate, configure and manipulate digital artifacts of our ongoing social learning experiences. (See Severance C., Hardin, J., Whyte, A. (2008). The coming functionality mash-up in Personal Learning Environments. Interactive Learning Environments, 16, 1, 47-62.
Attwell (blog: http://www.pontydysgu.org ) defines personal learning environments as a place that integrates all information activities like informal and lifelong learning, learning styles, new approaches to participation and creation of content. PLEs are inspired by the success of new technologies such as ubiquitous computing and social software. The most compelling argument for integrating content is to develop ways to respond to how we use technology so we can shape our learning and form communities to create, consume, remix, and share material.
ELGG, an aggregation portal
ELGG <http://elgg.org/about.php> is an open source social networking platform developed for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and encompasses blogging, file storage, RSS aggregation, learning profiles, FOAF functionality and more. Some of its features include: blogging, social networking, file repositories for individuals and communities, podcast support, tagging, RSS aggregation, collaborative community blogging, 'friends' networking, multilingual services and other customizable services.
Other portals are springing up all the time, as integrating social media and web 2.0 services become more popular and necessary.
Create your own social network
See CrowdVine, Ning and Tumblr as examples of aggregated social networks for learning, conferences or information-sharing.
Social networks can be created using Internet chat, blogs, wikis, podcasts, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, and voice over IP. Applications include GoogleGroups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), MouthShut.com (product reviews), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking & video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality & social media aggregation), Twitter (social networking and microblogging), and Yammer. Social media can be integrated using social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog, Ning, Sloodle and Plaxo.
Associated memes
- social network platforms; webtop; wearable computer platforms
- Baudrillard's blender <http://www.baudrillardsblender.com/>
- Baudrillard's Blender is a reciprocating, no-frills, low-brow design, self-writing-montage-machine for thinking critically about a combination of cultural leitmotifs: television, political process, journalism, communication, and media citizenship. It is a methodological performance of Symbolic Exchange as ethnographic surrealism. It is media appropriation as critical documentary.
- centralization; fragmentation; ubiquitous or pervasive computing
- federated identity
- mashups; remix; reconfiguration; homogenization
- Mash-UP Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE)
Final reflections
- Consider the notion of aggregation in a broader societal sense, as in a cohesive civil society.
- How does the 'concentration of power and wealth' threaten civil society? Or, does it?
- Does Google and Facebook for example represent some of the downsides of the aggregation of power and wealth in the digital age?
- i.e. monopolization? economic hegemony? multinational corporation control?
- How might the platforms of aggregation lead to new learning ecologies?
- Is this what is needed for the future of information literacy skill-building and lifelong learning? (i.e. Personal learning environments (PLEs)
- Finally, how do we teaching our users about the value of consolidating social media, and its importance in today's society? Is that one of our many roles?
- If you wish, explore one (or more) of these questions in the forums, Wimba classroom, on your blog or engage with someone in a forum with which you feel comfortable.
Other exploration
- Antelman, K., Lynema E. (2006). Toward a 21st century library catalog. Information Technology and Libraries, 3, 128-139.
- Cambridge, D., Fernandez, L., Kahn, S., Kirkpatrick, J., Smith, J. (2008). The impact of the open source portfolio on learning and assessment. JOLT – Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 4, 4, 490–502.
- Casey, M. (2007). Looking toward catalog 2.0. In: Nancy Courtney (ed.): Library 2.0 and beyond: innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
- Chalon, PX. (2008). OPAC 2.0: opportunities, development and analysis". In Proceedings of the 11th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries.
- Carter D. (2005). Living in virtual communities: An ethnography of human relationships in cyberspace. Information, Communication & Society, 8, 2, 148–167.
- Castells M. (2007). Mobile communication and society: a global perspective: A project of the Annenberg Research Network on international communication. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Corrado, E.M. (2008). Delicious subject guides: maintaining subject guides using a social bookmarking site. In Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 3.
- Dempsey L. (2009). Always on: libraries in a world of permanent connectivity. First Monday, 14, 1-5. Retrieved from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2291/2070
- Dempsey L. (2008). Reconfiguring the library systems environment. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 8, 2. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/archive/2008/dempsey-portal.pdf
- History of VLEs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments
- Horrigan J. Wireless Internet Use. Pew Internet and American Life Project. July 2009
- Mackenzie, C. (2007). Creating our future: workforce planning for library 2.0 and beyond. Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services, 20, 3, 118‐124.
- Weller M. Virtual learning environments: using, choosing and developing your VLE. London: Routledge, 2007.
- Social Mobile Web Conference 2009 Vancouver http://thesocialmobileweb.org/
- Ramakrishnan R., Tomkins A. (2007). Toward a people web. Computer, 40, 8, 63–72.
- Sierra, T., Ryan, J., Wust, M. (2007). Beyond OPAC 2.0: library catalog as versatile discovery platform. Code4Lib Journal, 1. Retrieved from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/10
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