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educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

Duncan Riley at the Inquistr has written a very significant post recently on “Giving Attribution” [11 May 2008] citing the importance of citing your sources and giving credit where credit is due.

The entire piece is worth reading as it outlines an informal, yet long-standing citation convention - much of which I use here. I strongly recommend you visit the site to participate in the discussion or at least avail yourself to the information. Personally, I’m bookmarking it and converting it to PDF as a reference for best practice.

Significantly Duncan argues that certain aspects of the convention are no longer followed, saying:

“The rough rules decided on then (by many) are what I’ve followed since; in part some of these may be overkill and sadly some are not followed today, but I’ve always considered this to be the fair way of doing things.”

To add my 2 cents to this, personally I’d like to see bloggers and amateur journalists return to the academic sensibilities and creative ethic that we learned in school when writing essays. That you can’t just state a fact or quote a statistic without showing where the information came from; or that personal opinions must be expressed as such and thus clearly delineate opinion and theory from cited proven fact.

This is particularly important from the standpoint of legitimacy and supporting our statements or arguments. A fact without a reference just isn’t a fact; and if we as bloggers ever hope to be taken seriously by the general public we must hold ourselves accountable to a code of ethics and conduct - whether formally stated or merely implied by the quality of our actions.

Equally important are the notions of idealism and personal responsibility that are at stake. The web we see today emerged as a means of bringing people together - hence the term social software. It’s about community-based efforts, providing for the common good and building a collective pool of knowledge and experience from which we all benefit. This can only be done if we respect the contributions of others and give credit where credit is due.

References:

• “Giving Attribution“, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 11 May 2008

If you’ve watched any of my recent YouTube videos (which most of you haven’t), you will have noticed a recurring problem with audio/video sync problems in which the video precedes the audio by nearly half a second. As a result the clips - despite the video quality - come across as severely disjointed and not very professional.

I haven’t been very happy about that and set out to locate the root cause of the problem. After a series of tests, each of which I’ve included below, I discovered it was all due to the codec I was using when making the recordings.

As a page in the YouTube support site entitled “The sound is out of sync on my video. How do I fix it?” indicates:

“Out-of-sync sound is usually the result of using an audio codec that our system doesn’t support. We’re always adding new ones, but if this happens to your video, you can try re-encoding it with a different audio compression. We recommend MP3 audio for best results.”

In the previous tests I had recorded the clips using the default QuickTime setting - Best (H.264). In the fourth test however I opted for the “Good (MPEG-4)” option to see if it improved things any. Lo and behold it did.

As a result I will now be able to start taking advantage of the better video quality I get from pre-recording clips prior to upload (rather than recording them directly to YouTube), while ensuring the audio and video are properly syncronised.

Changing the Settings:

To change the settings, go to QuickTime Player –> Preferences, select the recording tab and then choose Quality: Good (MPEG-4). You should then find the recordings created using this setting will play properly in YouTube.

Test Clips

In the interests of proper documentation, each of my 4 tests is included below:

Audio-Video Sync Issues Part 1 - Direct to YouTube
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbD8w3OcJ94]

Audio-Video Sync Issues Part 2 - MOV file upload
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwcKH8YhgFg]

Audio-Video Sync Issues Part 3 - Preliminary Findings
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt7MTkJyMRU]

Audio-Video Sync Issues Part 4 - MOV upload (MPEG-4)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648tgmiu47I]

References:

• “The sound is out of sync on my video. How do I fix it?” YouTube Help Center, accessed 7 May 2008

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.525600&w=425&h=350&fv=bgColor%3DFFFFFF%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fmovies%2FJIMMYWALES_high.flv%26autoPlay%3Dfalse%26fullscreenURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstatic.videoegg.com%2Fted%2Fflash%2Ffullscreen.html%26forcePlay%3Dfalse%26logo%3D%26allowFullscreen%3Dtrue] from www.ted.com posted with vodpod
Yesterday I mistakenly wrote that Wikipedia is outside the realm of open source. I’ve since tracked down a presentation by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and have realised how wrong I was to make that statement.

The video is a fascinating look into the organisational structure and sociology that is Wikipedia and is clearly indicative of a community with strong roots in open source and free software philosophy. There are numerous points and notable quotes from the presentation that support this notion, many of which are listed below:

Organisation

• new methods of organisation - “work by anyone who wants to pitch in”
• servers maintained by volunteer system administrators
• free licensing for all content - including reuse, redistribution, commercial or non-commercial use
• run by “rag-tag band of volunteers”
• repeated references to the Wikipedia community and not the Wikipedia websites

Managing Quality Control

• social policy - neutral point of view policy; social concept of cooperation.
• significant real-time peer review involving notifications of changes via IRC channel, RSS feeds, email announcements, New Page page

Content Creation/Edits

• Only 18% of edits by anonymous users
• 600 to 1000 people make bulk of edits
• Contributors described as semi-professionals who hold themselves to standards that are equal to or higher than professional standards of quality

Social Rules

• Most social rules left completely open-ended in the software. Nothing in software that enforces the rules.
• Democratic “social method” for vetting accuracy of information - votes by text
• Merit-based heirarchy/aristocracy

Governance Model

• “Very confusing but workable mix of consensus…democracy…(merit-based) aristocracy…and monarchy”
• “Free Software World” notion of “Benevolent Dictator” as means to ensuring openness and freedom won’t “undermine the quality of the content”

Final Thoughts

• “Our wiki model is the way we work but we’re not fanatical web anarchists.”
• “The passion of the community is for the quality of the work; not necessarily for the process that we use to generate it.”

What this means then is that one of the key exemplars of vibrant community-driven collaboration I had used to show the possibilities outside of the open source and free software movements is, in fact, as firmly based in the idealism and philosophies as its more technologically-minded brethren, such as Ubuntu or Apache.

Signficantly too is the fact that the wiki engine developed for Wikipedia, MediaWiki, is open source and available as free software, with all content on their site available under a GNU Free Documentation License.

Wales’ depiction of the Wikipedia’s organisational structure and sociology is so similar to other open source projects in fact that all that was missing was a reference to Linus Torvald’s famous quote “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Indeed Wikipedia has become another example pointing to the possibility that most successful collaborative online endeavours are based in open source or free software idealism.

This is a how-to guide for setting up a self-hosted WordPress on your own webserver.

Having performed this process on several different operating systems I have personally found that the process is easiest on a Linux distro - in my case I used Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. My personal philosophy is that open source software runs best on open source systems.

As a basic overview of what we’ll be doing, we are going to go through the process of taking a standard Linux disto and turning it into a web server that will run WordPress. This will require a few phases which involve the installation and configuration of the various components.

Ultimately you will have what is known as a LAMP stack installed on your system.

As Wikipedia explains ["LAMP (software bundle)"]:

“The acronym LAMP refers to a solution stack of software, usually free and open source software, used to run dynamic Web sites or servers. The original expansion is as follows:

• Linux, referring to the operating system;
• Apache, the Web server;
• MySQL, the database management system (or database server);
• Perl, Python, and PHP, the programming languages.^[1]

The combination of these technologies is used primarily to define a web server infrastructure, define a programming paradigm of developing software, and establish a software distribution package.

Though the originators of these open source programs did not design them all to work specifically with each other, the combination has become popular because of its low acquisition cost and because of the ubiquity of its components (which come bundled with most current Linux distributions). When used in combination they represent a solution stack of technologies that support application servers.”

The ingredients:

• Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (version 7.10)
• Apache2 (web server)
• MySQL (database server)
• PHP (programming language)
• WordPress (blogging engine)

Now there may be ways to tackle these phases through more graphical means, however I’ve personally found use of the terminal to be the fastest, and in some cases the easiest.

Step Zero: Update the list of available packages

Start by updating the list of available packages. This is done by opening a terminal window and typing ’sudo apt-get update’. You will be asked to provide a password at which point the terminal will ensure your packages are up to date.

As explained by Debian.org (”APT HOWTO“):

“The packaging system uses a private database to keep track of which packages are installed, which are not installed and which are available for installation. The apt-get program uses this database to find out how to install packages requested by the user and to find out which additional packages are needed in order for a selected package to work properly.

To update this list, you would use the command apt-get update. This command looks for the package lists in the archives found in /etc/apt/sources.list; see The /etc/apt/sources.list file, Section 2.1 for more information about this file.

It’s a good idea to run this command regularly to keep yourself and your system informed about possible package updates, particularly security updates.”

Step One: Download and Configure Apache2

Once this process has been completed it’s time to download and install the Apache2 web server software. Once again open a terminal window and enter:

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd

You will be told that a certain number of megabytes worth of archives must be downloaded - in my case this number was 5030kB - and asked to confirm. Type “Y” and enter and the download and installation process will begin. At the end of this process you will be returned to the prompt.

By default Apache uses Port 80, which is the standard HTTP port. If you have no other web servers in your network you can proceed to the next step. Otherwise if you have another web server using Port 80 you will need to update the PORTS.CONF file and designate another port.

To do this open a terminal window and type

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/ports.conf

After confirming the SU password the file will load and you will see only a few lines of code. The first line reads Listen 80. Change this number to another port that isn’t being used by another web server, click save and then close the document.

Once this has been done you’ll need to restart the web server by entering the following command in a terminal window:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Providing the server restarts correctly, if you go to http://youripaddress/apache2-default/ you should see a message on screen saying “It works!”

Step Two: Install MySQL and Create New Database

Now it’s time to install mySQL, which will provide the database for your blog. Once again, open a terminal window and type:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql

You will be told something to the effect of ‘Need to get 34.5 MB of archives.’ and asked to confirm the action. Type “Y” and click enter.

At this stage it’s time to create a database for your blog. Open a terminal window and enter

mysql -u root -p

and you will be prompted to enter your password. If you do not already have a password you can create one by opening a terminal window and typing

mysqladmin –u root password NewRootDatabasePassword

Here ‘NewRootDatabasePassword’ should be replaced by the password you wish to use.

Having done this type mysql -u root -p, enter your password and complete the following commands.

mysql> create database yourdbname;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> grant create, select, insert, update, delete, drop, alter, lock tables on yourdbname.* to ‘yourdbusername’@'localhost’ identified by ‘yourpassword’;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> \q
Bye

Step Three: Install and Configure WordPress

Now go to Wordpress.org, download the most recent software from the download page, and copy it to a new folder in the www root (/var/www/). Personally, I download everything to my desktop as an extra step, and then copy the folder to the webroot using the following terminal command:

sudo cp -R /home/mike/Desktop/wordpress /var/www/wpsandpit

Note: the file pathing in the above command references the user “mike”; your folder pathing will be different so be sure to confirm the location and not just copy-paste the command from here.

Once you’ve done this you’re just about finished and it’s just a matter of entering the details of the database you created in Step Two above and entering them into the wp-config.php file.

To open this file open a terminal window and type

sudo gedit /var/www/yourWPfolderName/wp-config.php

If this file comes up blank it more than likely means that the file doesn’t exist. In this case it’s easiest to copy the wp-config-sample.php file, rename it as wp-config.php, and then change the details.

WordPress.org goes into more detail about editing this file here, however the basics information needed appears at the very top of the page:

define(’DB_NAME’, ‘yourDBname’); // The name of the database
define(’DB_USER’, ‘yourDBuser’); // Your MySQL username
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourDBpassword’); // …and password

Step Four: Create Blog

The last step in the setup process is to go to http://yourIPaddress/yourwordpressfoldername, at which point you should see a page asking for your Blog Title and email address.

File in these details and click Install WordPress and you should then see a page giving you a username and password.

It is very important that you remember this information as there is no easy way to change the admin password. When you’ve written down this information click login and then enter the same admin username and password to enter the Dashboard.

NB: If for some reason when trying to access WordPress to complete this section you receive an error message saying “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required” there is one additional step to complete.

Open a terminal window and type the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

In the document that follows do a text search for “Dynamic Extensions”. In this section add a line that says:

extension=mysql.so

Save and close the document and then restart Apache2 by typing /etc/init.d/apache2 restart, and you should find you can continue the process.

References:

• Ubuntu website
• Apache website
  
• MySQL website
• PHP website
• WordPress.org
• “Installing WordPress“, wordpress.org
• “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required“, WordPress.org Forums
• “Editing wp-config.php“, wordpress.org
• “LAMP (software bundle)“, Wikipedia, accessed 21 April 2008

I admit it; before writing that last post I hadn’t even looked at Shyftr.  But now having done this I’m appalled by what I’m seeing.

Shyftr is taking blog posts in their entirety and duplicating them on their site.  In the wake of this the discussions that are emerging are completely independent of the original content and as such serve to circumvent the author entirely.

This makes me question what the purpose of having a blog is anymore.  If the originality of author content is no longer respected the unique value of their blogs is undermined and its overall purpose and value comes into question.

Scoble sees no issue with this (”Era of blogger’s control is over“), saying “This is a trend that the best bloggers should embrace. Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me.”

Scoble is obviously a collectivist, and sees the individual’s role in information aggregation as a means to an end - effectively, the purpose of the individual is to serve the collective.  Personally I completely disagree.

Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier today this trend is not going to benefit the wider discussions that take place in the wake of provocative or thought-provoking pieces.  In fact, particularly given Shyftr’s highly questionable model, this trend is going to be far, far worse.

Looking at this another way, Shyftr is making money by copying content.  Users have no motivation to visit the original site and authors are cut out of the equation completely.

For authors wanting to express their own thoughts and opinions and who value the input of other people as a means to embetter themselves and facilitate personal or professional development Shyftr is a knife in the back.

I’m not impressed.

References:

• “Era of blogger’s control is over” Scobelizer, 12 April 2008

Paul Glazowski at Mashable touches on the subject of lifestreaming today (”Shyftry: Good, Bad, and Potentially Quite Ugly“).

Advocates, he says, have “essentially come to the conclusion that attempts to own or compartmentalize information on the Web are futile, and that any effort to get the global conversation surrounding stories gathered from various places has some measure of legitimacy and is worthwhile to pursue.”

Enter the world of lifestreaming, which is effectively a socialised network of RSS aggregation with with addition of commenting.

I must say, my opinion on this area echoes the quote from the movie Jurassic Park, where Jeff Goldbloom’s character says “You were concentrating so much on whether you could that you never thought to ask if you should.”

From the standpoint of convenience I can see some logic on lifestreaming; however this only extends to the standpoint consumption of information. There’s so much information on the web, and so many different sources of content that a centralised and flexible location for each user’s chosen content streams makes perfect sense.

The issue I take with emerging lifestreaming applications like Shyftr and Friendfeed are they worsen the disconnect between islands of conversation, not lessen it.

As Glazowski explains:

“What Shyftr appears to provide instead [of centralising commenting at the source of the information] is a social commentary platform independent of those information sources. And if we can posit that the audience of blogs is strewn about multiple gateways of Shyftr’s type, we can intimate that a bizarre sort of grand disconnect would result. And then chaos ensues. In that picture, everyone does their own thing, and everyone, whether consciously or not, creates a great big mess of things.”

Advocates are correct in saying that attempts to own or compartmentalize information on the Web are futile. After all, blogs operate largely independently of one another, barring URL references to other articles. What emerges in this are countless parallel and localised conversations. However this disconnect is duplicated - if not worsened - in lifestreaming applications. At least content sources maintain a sense of context. In removing the context, lifestreaming applications devolve conversations to discussions about discussions; and significantly the disjointed pockets of conversation continue at the level of the aggregator instead of the blog.

With more and more people are talking about Collectivism, it’s important that we bear in mind what this  notion entails. Collectivism focuses on the group mind, in which context and content are key, and discussions and dialogue are the vehicles to delivery this content. Lifestreaming seems to be an attempt to capitalise on this notion, but it’s unsuccessful.

As Glazowski implies, the Holy Grail in online discussion is a means of bridging the disconnect between pockets of conversation.  Until that happens, the entry of additional applications that seek to “streamline” the discussion process will only server to deter it.

References:

• “Shyftry: Good, Bad, and Potentially Quite Ugly” Paul Glazowski, Mashable, 12 April 2008

One of the people I follow on Twitter, (jeff)isageek, asked the question today: “With services like friendfeed, twitter, disqus, google reader, del.icio.us, etc [sic] do i even need a ‘traditional’ blog?”

From the standpoint of eLearning and educational technology, my answer is a resounding: Yes.

Sure, it’s important to evaluate new technologies in terms of how they can be used to embetter our online activities - and more importantly our offline activities - however this must be ever tempered by proper investigation and inquiry.  Immediately flocking to the next new trend without thoroughly investigating the last one is detrimental to all technologies involved; not to mention the people that use them.  This is especially critical for education.

New technologies are emerging at a phenomenal pace, and perhaps not surprisingly this has served to whip up an ever-present sense of excitement and anticipation in which people are constantly looking for the next great innovation to top the last one.  In some regards this is a very valuable trend for the industry, because passion and enthusiasm breed interest and uptake, and people who may have once ignored the possibilities offered by eLearning and web technologies may perhaps begin to consider them.

In the same breath though the danger in this is that users may afford new tools an overinflated sense of value fanned by the flames of media hype.  The important task for users therefore - and particularly for educators - is to ensure these technologies are evaluated and analysed according to their own merit, rather than the ever fickle waves of pop culture influence; lest we fall prey to the curse of implementing technology for technologies sake.

In the case of brand new so-called lifestreaming technologies, advocates seem to place a tremdous amount of value on the speed of use and real-time interaction they afford users.  Ideas that were once allocated several hundred words are now crammed into 140 characters.  Speed is being afforded more consideration than thorough contextual elaboration.

This is what blogs facilitate that technologies like Twitter and Friendfeed cannot.  They provide space for carefully considered contemplation and reflection in which time requirements are secondary (if that) and accuracy and thoroughness of information and thought are of the utmost importance.  In keeping with this the comments and discussion that take place on blogs facilitate more considered responses, and are often times vehicles for investigation and reflection in their own right.

For certain industries, or social spheres, blogs may be quaint and passe; but they are not, and should not be perceived as such for education.

This is not to say that the aforementioned “friendfeed, twitter, disqus, google reader, [and] del.icio.us” do not or may not serve valuable purposes.  Real time communication tools, RSS readers and feed aggregators, social bookmarking tools, and discussion tools all have their uses - in fact they can be incredibly valuable.  The importance is to allow sufficient time to realise their true value (or lack thereof) before discarding older technologies.

The point: By all means, try everything; but evaluate them properly and thoroughly.  And remember, ‘traditional’ doesn’t always mean obsolete.

Here’s a quick idea that might prove useful for educators currently using - or thinking about using - blogs in classroom exercises.

One of the challenges of individual student blogs is the fact they’re independent of one another. So by themselves there’s no easy way to keep track of the activity from a single location.

I’ve seen instructors set up a blog to act as an index or portal, where each student blog is referenced with a link and description, or with each student’s blog contributions displayed as an RSS feed in the menu. However both options are still somewhat lacking.

Considering my recent experimentation with Pageflakes I have discovered an alternative that some may find useful. From their About page:

“Pageflakes is the easiest way to discover and share your favorite things on the Web. Whether you are trying to keep your family informed, track the many blogs and news sources that you read daily, promote a small business, or just wanting to express your ideas and interests, Pageflakes provides you everything in pages with your own unique mix.”

Pageflakes is a web-based aggregator for tonnes of different types of content. Users have the ability to select from a huge (and growing) library of different widgets, thereby creating customised pages that contain content from across the web. This can include videos, static text, email tools (for reading, sending and receiving), and importantly displaying RSS feeds.

Importantly, Pageflakes includes a feature known as Pagecasts, which enables you to make your pages visible to others. With Pagecasts you create a page as per normal, select Make Pagecast, and then select a visibility option (private, share with nominated individuals or group, and publish openly). Once configured the the page is visible at the level you have identified.

In the context of classroom blogging projects, this could easily be used as a portal whereby students and staff could browse through the recent contributions. Given the view options include the ability to restrict access to nominated individuals you could also maintain a level of privacy where only classroom participants have access, or open it up as a showcase for what your class is doing.

I’ve created an example I’ve called the “edubloggers aggregate” (see image) which contains the feeds for 12 of the blogs I follow. Personally I find the Pageflakes format much more conducive to browsing than a blog-as-portal. In some ways it even looks like an online magazine.

This was put together fairly quickly too, so with a bit of effort you could make one look even nicer and include information such as project background, blogging assignments, references or resources or other functionality offered by the widget library.

The flexibility offered by Pageflakes is an ideal option for tying an unrelated mass of disparate blogs into one unified portal, which in turn can reinforce the notion that the blogosphere is comprised of people, and not just content.

References:

• edubloggers aggregate on Pageflakes
• Pageflakes - http://www.pageflakes.com

Following on my post last night regarding the ABC News Online article on blogging being good for your social life, I’ve just finished reading the research study itself and would like to add a few parting comments and thoughts.

I found the study itself to be quite interesting and have no issues with the methodology used, nor the way the data analysis was presented. My concern is the way the study is being reported in the media and by bloggers. The coverage has been far too superficial and tends to omit important aspects of the study and data set, and therefore leaves room for false assumptions and over-generalised conclusions.

Important Points:

According to the study:

“The aim of the current study was to survey new users to the social networking Web site Myspace.com, comparing those who intended to blog with those who did not intend to do so on several psychosocial variables. Myspace.com was chosen over blog-specific Web sites in order to obtain a comparative sample of non-bloggers in addition to intending bloggers. Myspace.com has a large volume of new users (23,000 daily at the time of publication), and all users have the option of blogging with ease.”

First of all, the age demographic of MySpace users is quite narrow and specific and not representative of the aggregate of users of social software and particularly the Internet. Reports have placed MySpace’s demographic roughly in the 18 to 24 year old range, which corresponds to the developmental period between adolescence and adulthood in which individuals are still solidifying a sense of self, personality, personal identity, as well as the wider question of their purpose and place in the world.

It is an incredibly awkward period highlighted by psychological and emotional change, which is much more extreme relative to other age demographics.

The fact the entire research sample came from MySpace, and has a mean age of 24.5 years (median of 23.5 years for males; 25.8 for females), needs to be emphasized because the same study performed on an older demographic would probably yield entirely different results.

Furthermore, in their association with the online community, users of MySpace have already identified themselves as individuals who are attracted to social networking tools. So despite the fact only a percentage of respondents indicated they were planning on starting a blog, they had all make the decision to join MySpace. This would suggest the presence of one or more common motivators amongst the entire sample, and may have served to skew the results.

Therefore the conclusions reached in this study cannot and should not be extrapolated across the wider pool of users of online applications in sweeping statements.

Secondly, this report was specifically studying psychosocial and behavioural characteristics and growth patterns of users of online applications. No mention was made in the report on motives for blogging, or planned blog contents; nor was a copy of the survey questions made available.

Importantly it is also unclear whether respondents were specifically asked whether they planned to use blogs as coping mechanisms, or whether the study sought to infer the answers to this question based on their overall responses.

Depending on how the survey questions were worded, it is possible that the nature of the questions would have attracted or repelled people who were contacted, thereby skewing the results.

Concluding Remarks:

All this being said, this study did not seek to make generalized statements about blogging, only to report the quantitative findings gathered from a specific data set and provide an interpretation on what these results seem to suggest. The generalizations have been injected into the discussion by the media and bloggers, and this is unwise.

As with any preliminary study on an emerging activity, far more research is necessary before wide sweeping statements like “blogging is good for your social life” can be made. The devil is in the detail and dependent on a myriad of different variables.

Reference:

• “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New Myspace Users by Their Intention to Blog”, CyberPsychology & Behavior. February 1, 2008, 11(1): 81-85.

Via ABC News Online (”Blogging boosts your social life: research“), the findings of a recent research project out of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne has reported that:

“Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face…”

I have to say I’m always wary of main stream media news sources that generalise the findings of a study into a one-line grab, completely omitting the subtle realities of the quantitative data set in the process.

While this article piqued my interest initially I was left feeling extremely unsatisfied with their shallow account of the research publication. I hope the journal article itself will provide more insight, because I can’t say I read anything that I didn’t already know.

I also find it extremely surprising that the study turned to MySpace for their sample population. This came in the form of an email sent personally to 600 users, requesting their participation and directing them to an online survey. This yielded 134 submissions - with 84 intending to blog and 50 not intending to blog.

As an online environment, MySpace is a network geared more towards casual and fairly shallow interaction via comments and messaging. I wouldn’t exactly call it a staging area for would-be bloggers.

Then again, having just tracked down the journal article itself I note the title is “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New MySpace Users by Their Intention to Blog”.

While the content created on MySpace would still qualify as “blogging” in some cases, it should be noted that the caliper and nature of the content is drastically different on other blogging platforms. I would therefore advise against extrapolating the findings of this study in a general way across the entire population of bloggers, as you would likely discover the statistics are different.

Nonetheless, the fact that blogging research of any kind is starting to hit the radar of academia in Australia can only be a good thing.

References:

• “Blogging Is Good For Your Social Life: Study“, TechCrunch, 3 March 2008
• “Blogging boosts your social life: research“, ABC News Online, 3 March 2008
• “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New Myspace Users by Their Intention to Blog”, CyberPsychology & Behavior. February 1, 2008, 11(1): 81-85.