Europeana communication bug: which intervention strategy for a better cooperation with creative industry?

Although Europeana as well as many GLAMs are very engaged - beside the main mission, i.e. spreading cultural heritage knowledge- in developing new strategies in order to make digital contents reusable for creative industry, these efforts have been successful just only in sporadic cases. A significant know how deficits in communication often compromises expected outcomes and impact. Indeed, what prevails is an idea of communication like an enhancement “instrument” intended on the one hand in purely economic (development) sense, on the other hand as a way for increasing and spreading knowledge. The main reference model is more or less as follows: digital objects are to be captured and/or transformed by digital technologies into sellable goods to put into circulation. Nevertheless, this approach risks neglecting the real nature of communication, and more in detail the one of digital heritage where it is strategic not so much producing objects and goods as taking part into sharing environments creation (media) by engaged communities, small or large they may be. The environments act as meeting and interchange point, and consequently as driving force of enhancing. Only in a complex context of network interaction on line accessible digital heritage contents become a strategic resource for creating environments in which their re/mediation can occur – provided that credible strategies exist, shared by stakeholders and users. This paper particularly describes a case study including proposals for an effective connection among Europeana, GLAMs and Creative Industry in the framework of Food and Drink digital heritage enhancement and promotion. Experimental experiences as the one described in this paper anyway confirm the relevance of up-to-date policies based on an adequate communication concept, on solid partnerships with enterprise and association networks, on collaborative on line environments, on effective availability at least for most of contents by increasing free licensing, and finally on grassroots content implementation involving prosumers audience, even if filtered by GLAMs

Cloudworks: social networking for learning design

Why do some social networking services work and others fail? Can we apply the best of Web 2.0 principles to an educational context? More specifically can we use this as a means of shifting teaching practice to a culture of sharing learning ideas and designs? Can we harness the potential of technologies to create more engaging learning experiences for students? These are the key questions this paper addresses. We describe how we are using the concept of 'object-orientated social networking' to underpin the creation of a social networking tool, Cloudworks, for sharing learning ideas and designs

“Fairy rings” of participation: the invisible network influencing participation in online communities

Individuals participate in many different ways in online communities. There is an extensive body of research describing participation as a key metaphor in communities of practice and stressing that participatory mobility is influenced by underground multidirectional activities, directed away from the notion of periphery to the centre practices and taking the shape of expansive swarming and multidirectional pulsations. This article describes an ongoing observational study proposing a model that attempts to determine how users participate in online communities and what influences them to alter the way in which they participate. We performed daily observations on user participatory behaviour in 50 online communities using public domain – anonymous data available in the communities. The specific communities were selected because they are related to learning and support learning activities within their networks. The data observations collected were analysed using Compendium, a hypermedia knowledge mapping and sense-making tool, to represent and structure the data, make complex cross data queries, test hypotheses and build representation of real examples to support our claims. Initial findings indicate that users connect, participate, contribute and collaborate on a shared objective, transferring information and pooling knowledge within and between communities in four different modes. During their online journey, users switched between modes of participation or even remained in one specific mode, implying that the way in which users participate in an online community is not just related to the mode of participation and the level of engagement with the community but it is also due to hidden reasons or motivations, an invisible network of interactions of elements that affect the willingness of the user to participate. This layer is not immediately evident in the user actions but can be inferred by analysing user reactions. It is argued that user participation in online communities occurs in two layers; the “visible” layer of participation with the different modes; and the “invisible” layer of element interactions, similar to formations observed in nature when a radically spreading underground network of fungi activity results in a ring or arc formation of mushrooms, also known as a “fairy ring”. These underground multidirectional activities influence participation and participatory mobility. Following an open scientific inquiry approach and an open research paradigm we plan to share these observations with a wider audience of practitioners, researchers and theorists for all to test or contest our arguments, and to enrich, question, or support our model

ePortfolios: models and implementation

This paper explores the use of ePortfolio tools to support teaching, learning and the personal and professional development of postgraduate students at the Institute of Education, University of London (IOE). The needs of tutors and students are considered alongside the affordances and limitations of specific tools in relation to these needs. The study involved five areas of postgraduate study at the IOE, one at PhD level, two at Masters level (MA in ICT in Education and MTeach) and two PGCE courses (PGCE in ICT and Post-Compulsory PGCE). Preliminary discussions with IOE staff revealed five common themes relating to the perceived purpose of an ePortfolio: model, ownership, collaboration, accessibility and support. The first theme relates to the definition of the ePortfolio, whilst the remaining themes address questions relating to ownership, control, use and user needs/development. In this paper, each of the themes and the questions raised within those areas are addressed in detail and a cross-comparative table of responses across each of five teaching scenarios is provided with levels of importance measured on a scale of 1 (low) to 4 (high)

Internet innovations:exploring new horizons

The aim of this paper is to provide a standpoint on an emerging trend in sharing digital video content over the Internet. The paper is based on participative evaluative analysis of business model employed by digital video content sharing providers. The authors have found that because of wide diffusion of broadband and cheap video recording equipment, enabling digital video content to be shared online, and emerging business internet video sharing practice its users increasingly find themselves infringing the intellectual property rights of others. This has implications for anyone using online video resources. The paper offers an insight into the increasing popularity of online video and the resulting dilemmas encountered by internet researchers; it also offers a functional way for researchers, businesses and online users to understand the mechanism of infringement of the intellectual property rights relating to online video content. The paper further contributes to expanding the understanding of internet users behaviour in relation to digital video content creation and distribution in the context of challenges faced by cyberlaw

A user-oriented network forensic analyser: the design of a high-level protocol analyser

Network forensics is becoming an increasingly important tool in the investigation of cyber and computer-assisted crimes. Unfortunately, whilst much effort has been undertaken in developing computer forensic file system analysers (e.g. Encase and FTK), such focus has not been given to Network Forensic Analysis Tools (NFATs). The single biggest barrier to effective NFATs is the handling of large volumes of low-level traffic and being able to exact and interpret forensic artefacts and their context – for example, being able extract and render application-level objects (such as emails, web pages and documents) from the low-level TCP/IP traffic but also understand how these applications/artefacts are being used. Whilst some studies and tools are beginning to achieve object extraction, results to date are limited to basic objects. No research has focused upon analysing network traffic to understand the nature of its use – not simply looking at the fact a person requested a webpage, but how long they spend on the application and what interactions did they have with whilst using the service (e.g. posting an image, or engaging in an instant message chat). This additional layer of information can provide an investigator with a far more rich and complete understanding of a suspect’s activities. To this end, this paper presents an investigation into the ability to derive high-level application usage characteristics from low-level network traffic meta-data. The paper presents a three application scenarios – web surfing, communications and social networking and demonstrates it is possible to derive the user interactions (e.g. page loading, chatting and file sharing ) within these systems. The paper continues to present a framework that builds upon this capability to provide a robust, flexible and user-friendly NFAT that provides access to a greater range of forensic information in a far easier format

Engaging students with mobile web2.0.

Abstract: Blogs, wikis, podcasting, and a host of free, easy to use web2.0 social software provide opportunities for creating social constructivist learning environments focusing upon student-centred learning and end-user content creation and sharing. Building on this foundation, mobile web2.0 has emerged as a viable teaching and learning environment, particularly with the advent of the iPhone (Nicknamed “the Jesus phone” (Goldman, 2007)) and iPod Touch. Today’s wifi enabled smartphones provide a ubiquitous connection to mobile web2.0 social software and the ability to view, create, edit and upload user generated web2.0 content. This paper outlines how mobile web2.0 technologies can be harnessed to enhance and engage students in a social constructivist learning environment. Examples of student and teaching staff feedback are drawn from several mobile learning trials that have been conducted at Unitec New Zealand. Additionally the presentation will involve mobile web2.0 demonstrations and facilitate a discussion around the practicalities of integrating and supporting mobile web2.0 within a tertiary course