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I’ve been writing a few things lately about the Internet as a tool for collaborating and connecting minds, both in terms of expanding educational opportunities and in the context of skills our students will need in the future. I’d like to explore another aspect of that for a moment…
I believe networked collaboration tools can serve a crucial role in other ways as well: as collaboration tools for social improvement. During the Long Now conference earlier this year, author Paul Hawken spoke of the emergence of what he calls ‘the largest movement in the world’: countless organizations working in decentralized unison to restore the environment and foster social justice.
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Social bookmarking - ever heard of it? It’s yet another example of a powerful new way of collaborating. In the immortal words of Herry Monster, two heads are better than one. Here’s why and how…
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On Tuesday morning, Mark and I did a presentation for K-12 parents on the topic “The Internet, you, your child: why can’t we all just get along?”, where we shared survey data from Mark’s MS classes on Internet usage, responded to questions from the audience and also shared a good video explaining Social Networking. It was a good talk, with lots of interesting questions. A lot of the questions centered around Facebook, which the vast majority of the HS students are using. Many parents were concerned about their students not using the privacy settings in Facebook.
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Mark Granovetter introduced more than thirty years ago the notion of “the strength of weak ties” - the idea that for many purposes, a large network of loose connections can be more useful for meeting many of your needs than a small network of close connections, e.g. for finding a job. This may seem counter-intuitive, but just think about it: there is typically a relatively large overlap between your network of connections and those of your close friends or family members. You already know or regularly interact with many of the same people, and it’s probably unlikely they’ll be able to pull out of a hat a connection to a person you don’t know, who possesses just the skills or resources you’re looking for. A former colleague who’s since moved on to a new occupation, however, is probably more likely to know new people and be able to put you in touch with what (or who) you need.
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