Modeling the structure and evolution of discussion cascades

We analyze the structure and evolution of discussion cascades in four popular websites: Slashdot, Barrapunto, Meneame and Wikipedia. Despite the big heterogeneities between these sites, a preferential attachment (PA) model with bias to the root can capture the temporal evolution of the observed trees and many of their statistical properties, namely, probability distributions of the branching factors (degrees), subtree sizes and certain correlations. The parameters of the model are learned efficiently using a novel maximum likelihood estimation scheme for PA and provide a figurative interpretation about the communication habits and the resulting discussion cascades on the four different websites.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Beyond the hybrid library : libraries in a Web 2.0 world

Considers the development of social networking and the concept of Web 2.0. Looks at the implications for libraries and how traditional competences remain relevant. Explores what libraries are doing and must do to remain relevan

Education Unleashed: Participatory Culture, Education, and Innovation in Second Life

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and LearningWhile virtual worlds share common technologies and audiences with games, they possess many unique characteristics. Particularly when compared to massively multiplayer online role-playing games, virtual worlds create very different learning and teaching opportunities through markets, creation, and connections to the real world, and lack of overt game goals. This chapter aims to expose a wide audience to the breadth and depth of learning occurring within Second Life (SL). From in-world classes in the scripting language to mixed-reality conferences about the future of broadcasting, a tremendous variety of both amateurs and experts are leveraging SL as a platform for education. In one sense, this isn't new since every technology is co-opted by communities for communication, but SL is different because every aspect of it was designed to encourage this co-opting, this remixing of the virtual and the real

Back to basics : A-literacy, the Boolean gene, convergence and the long tail

Based on a paper given at the Fiesole Retreat held in Lund in July 2006. This article seeks to explore issues on the future relevance of libraries in a world dominated by the web and how far "off-web" resources will have any relevance to users. Libraries are slow to respond to external competitors and cultural changes, but their own practices paradoxically leave them well equipped to make such responses. Challenges libraries to build on existing experience and skills in the Web 2.0 world

Google matrix analysis of directed networks

In past ten years, modern societies developed enormous communication and social networks. Their classification and information retrieval processing become a formidable task for the society. Due to the rapid growth of World Wide Web, social and communication networks, new mathematical methods have been invented to characterize the properties of these networks on a more detailed and precise level. Various search engines are essentially using such methods. It is highly important to develop new tools to classify and rank enormous amount of network information in a way adapted to internal network structures and characteristics. This review describes the Google matrix analysis of directed complex networks demonstrating its efficiency on various examples including World Wide Web, Wikipedia, software architecture, world trade, social and citation networks, brain neural networks, DNA sequences and Ulam networks. The analytical and numerical matrix methods used in this analysis originate from the fields of Markov chains, quantum chaos and Random Matrix theory.Comment: 56 pages, 58 figures. Missed link added in network example of Fig3

Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions: supplementary materials

These supplementary materials accompany the report ‘Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions’, which is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from the commissioned literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers