Writing up March 29, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Research , add a commentJust as I am in an intense period when I should be concentrating solely on writing up, lots of interesting discussions are breaking out with some ideas and stories which are new to me, involving exciting new learning opportunities.
It’s certainly a dilemma, is this usual I wonder?
My Starred Items March 22, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : tools , add a commentGoogle Reader is an oddball amongst RSS readers. I think I’m the only person I know who still uses it. Anyway, they now provide for sharing feeds back out again, so here is a clipping which shows my ’starred’ items.
Technorati Tags: googlereader, RSS, google, blogroll, sharing
Blackcap warbler March 21, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , add a comment
Join the RSPBI spotted a new bird species in my inner-city/suburban garden recently, one which I couldn’t identify. I had a good view of it, so I could describe it very accurately. Eager to find out what it was, I raided my dusty bookshelves and pulled out a small, cheaply produced bird book. Flicking through a book full of pictures is a very powerful way of searching to match an image, and it occurred to me that this is one of the properties of physical books which cannot easily be replaced by any website, whether community edited and 50 times as big as Britannica or not. It would not have been much use typing “medium sized garden bird with a grey body, lighter coloured throat and distinctive black head” into google or something simpler into google images either. You have to know what you’re searching for, and all I had in my mind was a recollection of what the bird looked like.
The book worked, and I quickly found a page featuring the “Blackcap warbler” the illustration for which was a very close fit. But then I read the blurb which told me it was a “summer visitor” apart from just a few individuals which may overwinter in the westcountry, where I am not. It’s definitely not summer here, and I’d never seen one before, so was this some very rare visitor, blown thousands of miles of course by freak weather? perhaps I had misidentified it. Without the internet, I would have been left with considerable doubt and no positive identification. But having found the vital information keyword “Blackcap” I could quickly check out the RSPB site and discover that my little book was innaccurate, being hopelessly out of date.
“Although primarily a summer visitor birds from Germany and north-east Europe are increasingly spending the winter in the UK”
I just hadn’t noticed any before.
Technorati Tags: blackcap, searchengine, rspb, google
“isolatr” - The antidote to Web2.0 March 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , comments closedAs it’s Friday afternoon, why not have a quick look at the FAQ for isolatr.com - the antidote to web2.0
” I don’t care, rain or snow,
Whatever you want, the answer’s NO”
( viral link-ad first infected from Richard Fairhurst)
Technorati Tags: isolatr, humour, web2.0
Meanwhile, in another place.. March 13, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : COP, cider, Wiki , add a commentWhile my focus has been on the exhibition and barn raising for DARnet, there have been some important developments over at ukcider.
Quietly on Saturday, the wiki cider pub guide count passsed the 600 mark. This represents a quantitative move beyond the scope that any printed guide has managed to achieve, as well as being more accurate and up to date of course, having the advantage of an immediate, numerous and knowlegable online editorship.
And down in Dorset, Rose Grant whose cidermaking year is published as a kind of journal within the wiki, has been thinking hard about fitting out her own very real and non metaphorical barn which houses the cidermaking operations. The engineering problem is to raise a large number of apples from ground level to the roof in a continuous process to feed the apple mill, from which the pomace can then be dropped down into the racks to form the cheeses for the press.
Rose is considering building a single elavator which raises the apples above the level of the roof, and then dropping them down through a large diameter pipe set at 90 degress. But some testing is needed to find out how well this would work and there lies a problem in that by the time that there are enough apples around to set up an apple rolling trial, it will be too late to design and build the elevator ready for the pressing season.
This is where a community of practice such as ukcider really shows how valuable it can be to members, as Rose well understands from having learned enough about the science and craft of cidermaking to develop from hobbyist to small scale professional, through tapping the expertise and support which exists in the community.
The wise move is simply to explain the situation and ask the question, then parts of the problem begin to be solved.
I came up with this:
“There aren’t any apples around right now. But you can’t afford to wait for apple season in order to obtain the information you need to design the elevator.
Supposing somebody with access to a sack or two of apples in
the southern hemisphere reading this might have plenty
of apples available either now or in the next few months? It must be
late summer there now already. Maybe Rose could explain exactly what
is needed, work out how they should conduct the trials and take notes,
and they might even record a video of the apples rolling down the pipe
so the effect can be seen. The outcome from this little piece of
international cooperation might be sufficiently valid for the
elevator to be designed with a reasonable confidence that the gravity
feed is going work.”
Within a few hours on the mailing list, an offer came in from Trevor and Frances.
“Yes the southern hemisphere apples are maturing nicely. Here in New Zealand I have collected in the earlys a couple of weeks ago and Kingston Black last weekend, just a few lates inc Royal Wilding to go. I would be pleased to help with experimenting if Rose, you can sketch out your plans.”
And now detailed instructions are being transmitted around the globe.
It will be fascinating to follow how the remote experiment helps, or if Rose decides to solve the problem based on some of the other suggestions which members have posted. Somebody suggested using an open trough instead of a pipe, but the snag with that idea has been pointed out:
“I want to use a pipe rather than a chute as this would also send water pouring into the roof when it rains.”
One thing is for sure, with such remarkable determination no obstacle will stand in the way of this particular cider barn being up and running ready for this year’s increased production.
Technorati Tags: cider, ukcider, communities_of_practice, wiki
Communicating on a wiki March 10, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , comments closedHow do you communicate on a mediawiki?
Well you can receive information on what’s being added by following the Recent Changes page.
On DARwiki that’s here
http://distributedresearch.net/wiki/index.php/Special:Recentchanges
and has an RSS feed here:
http://distributedresearch.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss
but the main thing is probably to understand that you can communicate
by writing on the wiki, either by editing content pages, by adding comments into ‘discussion’ pages, or on other people’s and your own ‘talk’ page. If somebody adds writing on a ‘talk’ page, then the user gets alerted next time they visit. Every registered user has a talk page, just as every content page has a potential “discussion” page.
Another alternative which is sometimes necessary is to use an email listserv in conjunction with the wiki.
The DARnet mailing list is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/DARnet
( mice graphic is from Fête de l’Internet)
Yee haw it’s the barn raising! March 10, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , add a commentFive days of rapid wiki community building at the DARnet wiki have just started.
So there’s lots of work to be done, people to meet and cycles of action research to be undertaken. The central channel for communication is the barn raising page on DARnet wiki, and I need to find an internet relay chat (irc) rc client for mac OSX.
Already, we have a proposal from Giorgio Bertini for the DARnet wiki to become a “Action Research Coffee Shop, an encounter place for Jean McNiff’s “Critical Friends and Validation Group for Professional Learning”, for colleages working on Action Research projects to present them, exposing the projects to others critiques and suggestions”
I enthusiastically endorse the proposal because the kind of peer review process described seems like an excellent purpose for the emerging DAR community to congregate.
Tags: barnraising, wiki, launch, CoP2.0, distributedactionresearch
AREOL - server temporarily down March 9, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , add a commentFor those on the AREOL - “Action research and evaluation on line”
course wondering why there’s no email or why your mail submissions are being bounced, I’ve investigated and uncovered the reason.
Southern Cross University
www.scu.edu.auSouthern Cross University web presence is currently unavailable due to their optical fibre network sustaining damage from earthworks being undertaken on their Lismore Campus.
The expected timeframe for services to be restored is approximately mid day, Friday 10th March 2006.
It seems to have knocked out the entire scu.edu.au domain, including listservs.
Australia is near the beginning of the timezones so midday Friday will be more like late Friday evening in Europe and early Saturday morning in the Americas, I think that’s how it works.
Wiki Wednesday presentation March 9, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London, UK, Wiki , add a commentLondon Wiki Wednesday came and went, and very good it was too. I got to meet some interesting people, chat about wiki implentations, 
and make my own presentation about my research and stuff. The attendance of over 20 was encouraging, given the change of date, my only disappointment being the short time afterwards to mingle and discuss what we’d heard about.
There was some interest in my decription of the social processes around community wikis, in technical aspects of mediawiki implementation and in wikis as an area for ethnographical research. I think the Barn Raising concept was new to everybody except John Barben whom I’d encountered online already at the CPsquare conference earlier this year where the topic was discussed.
Cool to meet Jeremy Ruston, inventor of Tiddlywiki. Clever stuff.
Technorati Tags: wikiwed, distributedactionresearch, onlineexhibition, wiki, London, londonmeetups, barnraising,
London Wiki Wednesday March 5, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wikiwed, London, Action Research , comments closed
From John Barben’s blog I was notified of a date change and at short notice I’ve decided to go along to Wiki Wednesday in London on the 8th March where I’ll be briefly presenting some of my research, listening to a bunch of clever people talking about social software, wikis and web2.0 stuff, and maybe gaining support for my online exhibition ( opening March 8th) and DARwiki barn raising ( March 10th-15th) as well. Should be fun. So at a very late stage in the research cycle proceedings, it looks like I shall be able to do some sort of face-2-face presentation to a relevant audience after all. Funny the way things pan out.
Technorati Tags: wikiwed, distributedactionresearch, onlineexhibition, wiki, London, londonmeetups, barnraising,
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
