Monday, December 9, 2013

Overview
Connection
Teaching Point/Demonstration
Active Engagement/ Link
Reading and Writing Project
The Reading Writing Project
Reading and Writing Project is to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers.
How does it work?

The project works with different types of schools—public, charter, and private—in surrounding suburbs, districts across the US, and distant corners of the world, as well as with schools in New York City.

The Mini-lesson Structure
The Design within the workshop model
Conclusion
Coffee keeps the discourse going...
Remore Williams
The connection is to engage students into the lesson with something they can relate to... in
this case the students can relate to
feeling lost with nonfiction text they are reading

The teacher will teach and demonstrate a strategy or skill that that students can use. "Readers can figure out what the author is trying to say in nonfiction texts by reading closely and by using other texts to help truly understand the authors message."
Is a 8 - 12 minute lesson with students trying out a new strategy or skill taught.
The active engagement allows students to share their thinking or to try out a new strategy or skill independently. "Readers turn and talk with your partners about how Hollywood portray guerrillas as these horrible animals and how they are presented in this text."
During independent practice
Teacher confer with small groups of students or on a one-to-one basis with students
During active engagement
Students turn and talk during partner share
Students may stop and jot on post-its or notebooks during interactive whole group demonstration
A small group of students model (Fish bowl) conversations for the rest of class to observe

The following collections are samples put together by students. These texts can be printed, emailed, or read right from the screen in order to strengthen the nonfiction reading in your classroom or at home.
http://www.sikids.com/
http://www.timeforkids.com/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://kidshealth.org/teen/

Lucy Calkins

See the full transcript

Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Going from Prezi to Popcorn Maker seemed like a great idea to give more emphasis to the video. Giving impetus to the video in anyway detracts from the video. In fact the objective is to use multimodal communication to compliment the other.

The Prezi presentation on “The Reading Writing Project” gives it’s audience a chance to interact with the software on a personal level. Be it parents or educators, they are able to watch the video play automatically or they can click forward through the slide to the section that they are most interested in leaning about the project. As users interact with the Prezi they may notice that a presenter is unnecessary. Unlike PowerPoints, Prezi’s don’t require the presenter to guide its audience or viewers thought the end of the presentation. Therefore, there is greater freedom of choice for the user to interact with the presentation on a personal level.

Prezi may seem intimidating. After interacting with the software for a while the fear of working with the software diminishes. The learning curve, in other words, understanding how to use Prezi’s features is quick. The simplicity of using Prezi is not to be overlooked. Finding the slide that suits your presentation is crucial because it makes your Prezi more or less appealing. Finding a sample model and editing it with your information makes communication more purposeful. Hock states that the visual design has motivated and engaged readers in the complex web of text. Prezi actually engages its readers in the complex web of text.

Using Popcorn Maker to remediate ‘The Reading and Writing Project” done through Prezi presentations highlight the affordances and the hindrances between both these sites. Popcorn Maker makes allowances for videos to be uploaded to the web and be “remixed”. An incentive of using Popcorn Maker is that you can take a video and add texts, audio and pictures to the original creating a remix. What is remix or mashups? A remix is taking an original music or song(s) and manipulating it in a way so that it sounds completely different from the original. A mash up is similar to that of a remix. It however also refers to taking music, videos, texts and manipulating them to look and sound differently from the original. Mashups can even include web applications where these applications can be manipulated to work in a completely different application thus create a hybrid web application.

A major concern of using “The Reading and Writing Project” video recording that was available on YouTube is the copyright laws. Lawrence Lessig asserts that the copyright laws are stunting the creativity of youths in the 21^st century. While Lessig does believe in the copyright laws it’s difficult for him to ignore the fact that copyright laws have criminalized the youths of 21^st century who want to be creative. Copyright laws also reduce the affordances that remix and mash up brings to the global culture. Lessig stresses that there has to be some sort of balance with the current copyright laws.

The learning curve with Mozilla Popcorn Maker is steep. There are some hindrances. For example the site crashed a lot resulting in lost of work. Popcorn Maker worked on some web browsers like Google chrome and not others likes Safari. Thus creating anxiety and frustration for users. On the other hand, users of Popcorn makers are developing skills in composing with videos online.

Prezi and Popcorn Maker both give emphasis to the use video in multimodal composition. Prezi is quite user friendly however Popcorn Maker requires greater patience and expertise with video editing. Both utilize text in a way that is meaningful to the manner and the purpose in which the program is being used. The experience of using Prezi and Popcorn Maker conveys the importance of multimodal compositions in this dynamic and global world where there are cultural shifts in the meaning of writing and composing texts.

Blog 12: Myspace versus Facebook: Is there really evidence of social classism?

Dana Boyd in “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class shaped American Teen Engagement with Myface and Facebook” explores the notion that class and race are deciding factors in which teenagers utilizes Facebook and MySpace. "This article explores a division that emerged between MySpace and Facebook among American teens during the 2006-2007 school year" (3). The division that Boyd speaks about, between Myspace and Facebook users, is synonymous with Caucasians moving to the suburbs, the "white flight" (4). Hence, White teenagers move from MySpace to Facebook, thus showing a preference between social media sites, which correlate with race and class.

It seems that Boyd also feels that it's not just only about race or class that distinguishes why a particular race move from one social media to another, but that aesthetics and taste also play a role in understanding the social divisions. However, taste and aesthetics may reflect a particular race or class. This interpretation of taste and aesthetics seems to always reflect class and race.

Myspace and Facebook may not be the first social media. However, they both appealed to the young adults who adopt these social media sites a way of right of passage. Myspace is viewed my teenagers as the site to connect with “cool adults” with reference to older siblings or relatives who are into the nightlife and partying. Users of Myspace are also able to connect with their favorite bands. Parents who are aware of Myspace are indifferent to this site and they try to warn their children about the dangers of Myspace. The origins of Facebook begin with elite college students at Harvard. As a result, Facebook caters to a college level audience only. Slowly teens adopt this social media site as a rite of passage to identity with other collegiate (7-8).

Boyd’s perspective on race and class with regards to the use of Myspace and Facebook by teenagers is not based on statistics. However, there are some statistics from Hargittai (2007) and Hare (2009) to corroborate Boyd’s point that the race and class of individuals’ manifest their preference of Facebook to that of Myspace or vice versa.

White and Asian students and those parents of higher education took to Facebook. On the other hand, Hispanic students and those parents who did not have a high school degree took to Myspace. African-Americans students did not more like to choose one or the other. Affluent individual tend to use Facebook rather than Myspace. Boyd also points out that if an individual decides to choose either of these two sites then it’s evident that there is some relevance to the patterns. However, without knowing the demography and the biases of these surveys, the validity of this argument is less convincing.

Boyd asserts that teenagers have a tendency of sticking to peer groups of their race or socio-economical background. This insinuates that teens typically use social media sites where they can connect with people who are like them, similar to what is evident in schools. In other words, teens create their social categories and group labels that is their shared identities. On the other hand, there are times when teen self-segregate thus recreating the class and race structure evident in the wider community (12-14). Boyd quotes several sociologists, to give some bearing on nature of forming identity and social groups. In fact, this did give some understanding of how social groups and identities are form. According to Boyd, “Teens joined social network sites to be with their friends. Given social divisions in both friendship patterns and social spaces, it is surprising that online communities reflect what everyday social divisions”(16). Nevertheless, her point is not completely a racial one; people will in fact create groups that may be racially, economically o and educationally justified.

Boyd points out that there are those teens that chose a particular social media site based on the features and designs these social media sites can afford to their users. Myspace and Facebook make affordances in some areas and hindrances in others that eventually appeal to or deter particular users. In one of Boyd’s interview with a teenager, she (the teenager) feels that Facebook appears safer than Myspace. However, she could determine why she feels that Facebook safer than Myspace. The determining factor for choosing a social media site is friend participation in a particular point.

The key features that draw individuals to a particular social media site are aesthetics and profile personalization (22). With regards to Myspace users can “pimp” or “bling” out their sites to suit their profile or taste. In the same token, pro Myspace users may prefer t abhor the thought of using such features. On the other hand pro Facebook users like the simplicity of their sites while Myspace users might find it dull (22). Hence, tastes in design of these social sites play an integral role in the groups of teens who use a particular site. According to Boyd “Taste and aesthetics are not universal, but deeply linked to identity and values” (24). Thus the implication is that hip-hop which is mostly linked with urban societies, youths and the African-American groups is common on Myspace. Boyd also states “ The choice of certain cultural signals or aesthetics appeals to some while repelling others” (23-24). Based on Boyd’s report about the users of Myspace and Facebook, taste and aesthesis also reflect race and class (24-25).

It appears that most of the teens that Boyd interviews aren’t saying that there is a direct racial distinction among those who use Myspace or Facebooks. They seem very cautious in the manner in which they convey their observations. Most of the times her participants seem to clarify the fact that they are only making an observation, or rather stating the obvious. However, Boyd guides students to pinpoint what they are seeing as patterns of race and class that is evident on social media sites.

It’s evident that there is a shift in users from Myspace to Facebook. Does it have to be a socio-economical or racial issue? A politically correct take on the shifts from one social media site to another should be about the designs, affordances or hindrances that these social sites present users.

Some of Boyd’s ideas hint to the fact that teens are searching for their identity. However, their inexperience may lead them to choose subculture groups that are inferior to others. Boyd presents a valid claim that social cohesion is a major factor in explaining why teens leave a social media site than the other. Also, another major factor is that teen especially like trying out new things. Her other arguments hold some truth in them for example there is a shift in users from Myspace to Facebook due to parents fear for inappropriate use.

In the article Trial by Twitter by Ariel Levy, Levy showed how social media can be use to shed light on some heinous crimes, like rape. Levy looks at how the Steubenville football players faced with rape charges against an intoxicated fifteen year old. When social media plays a role in a trail then there is the aggregate of evidence and public opinion that could influence the outcome of a trail. Many people, youths especially think that they can say anything on social media sites but they can come back to plague these users who are participating on social media sites.

Fifteen years ago, Richmond and Mays would have escaped suspicion: before smartphones and Twitter, rumors floated around high schools and then dissipated, often before adults knew what was real and what was adolescent imagination. As it was, the evidence was limited to tweets, the photograph of Richmond and Mays carrying the girl, and a cell-phone video recorded late on the night of the parties and then uploaded to YouTube. It showcased a ruddy recent graduate of Big Red named Michael Nodianos sitting in a bedroom at the second party and drunkenly holding forth about the evening. “You don’t need any foreplay with a dead girl,” he says. He is laughing uncontrollably, as are several other boys in the room. “She’s deader than O.J.’s wife. She’s deader than Caylee Anthony,” he continues. “They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in ‘Pulp Fiction.’ . . . She is so raped right now.” Nodianos keeps on riffing, and his audience keeps on laughing, for more than twelve minutes (Levy 2013).

There is not doubt that social media can taint a case and throw off what the proper authorities think is the case or investigation because of online participants input. As in a lot of rape the evidence weakens with time. However, there is still enough online dialogue, video and pictures that seem enough to convict the two teenagers accused of rape.

Blog 10: Electronic portfolios and teaching basic writers

Blog 11 Electronic portfolios and teaching basic writers

An electronic portfolio is a collection of digital works created by students’ overtime. Electronic portfolio deviates from the traditional pen to paper portfolios. They can do a lot for students, instructors and institutions as discussed the articles that follow.

Katleen Yancey in Electronic Portfolios a decade not the Twenty-First Century speaks positively of electronic portfolios. Students are more interested in them and can participate and customize their electronic portfolios. A major asset is that some colleges use electronic portfolio questionnaires to screen students for “noncognitive” qualities that prove crucial in identifying students who will stay in school (29). Yancey, as many others, is interested in the correlation between electronic portfolios, student engagement and increasing retention. This might be a good thing for institutions but it is another way to selectively screen out students who do not match the description of the students that colleges want to matriculate.

When it comes to electronic portfolios, Yancey claims that models, technology, programs and context are decisive factors in understanding how electronic portfolios might impact student’s learning. There isn’t any one program that can monitor this circumstance for all students’ leaning. Technology is dynamic and is ever changing. Therefore, institutions have to figure out what is best for their students. Getting students’ feedbacks on the various electronic portfolios is a qualitative way of measuring student-learning experiences. Through student reflections, an individual can learn of the affordances or the hindrances that particular electronic portfolio presents.

There are major benefits of electronic portfolio. They are good for organizing and showcasing students’ work overtime. Educators can organize students’ work overtime for assessments. As well as, electronic portfolios may be utilized in the various departments. Some institutions can adopt them for all students to use in the screening process.

As students learn how to use electronic portfolios they develop transferable skills that are useful in other aspects of their lives. Yancey asserts that there are many affordances. The skill matrix develops communication skills, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, life management, research project development, social responsibility, and teamwork. They can also use skills that they already have in their field of study or careers, thus transferring their skills to broader contexts.

Marisa Klages and Elizabeth Clark in New World of Errors and Expectations: Basic Writers and Digital assumptions asserts that electronic portfolios, blogs and web tools are able to help basic writers become successful writers in a digital world. Despite being in the digital age, Klages and Clarks observe that great deals of students are not skilled at the new technologies available.

It is apparent that most basic users are capable and adept users and/or consumers of the technologies that are available. On the other hand, they aren’t effective producers. Klages and Clark believe that basic writers need to know how to write for the multimodal environment.

A key component of the electronic portfolio is the potential for users to reflect, revise and edit their work. Most of these portfolios are available online so they are open to the public thus basic writers naturally have to start thinking about their audience because they are putting themselves out there. Hence students have to reflect on their practice thinking about their audience and delivery, which are important elements that basic writers need to consider.

Electronic portfolio is a way for those who grew up with technology, “digital natives,” to change with the technology being able to write within framework of that technology comfortably and with proficiency. Klages and Clarks points out that educators are face with the challenge of teaching students to address the cultural shifts from a pen paper technology to electronic portfolios and Web 2.0 digital literacies and multimodal composition strategies. However, students tend to have more experiences with the technologies that are available that the educators. Students might know the technology better but they still need to learn the fundamentals of basic writing for example writing with a purpose and knowledge of audience. With regards to the technology, educators do need to learn how to use the technology in order for them to work with their students successfully.

If students are left alone to figure out the different types of models, they will compose within these frames because they will eventually learn the rules in writing for electronic portfolios per se. Klages, Clarks as well as Yancey point out that there is such a thing as good writing for multimodal compositions and that basic writers have yet to master these rules of writing. An important case in point is that these students are doing a lot of online writing. Part of this as to do with them not feeling that their writing is being scrutinized by their teachers. There is also this need to communicate. Standard writing does not appeal to basic writers, as are writing emails, creating blogs and or posting on social media sites. An electronic portfolio as it appears engages students on multiple levels. It helps educators to find a forum for which to teach students how to write and publish effectively.

Klages and Clarks insinuate that basic writings courses are often marginalizing for basic writers. Often times basic writers have to first complete “prerequisite” basic writing courses before they can begin regular college courses, which is demeaning (38). The impression that basic writers have about writing is that it’s only necessary to get around the roadblocks that hinders them from achieve their goals. Thus, writing for basic writers does not seem to have any purpose outside of the classroom because they aren’t intending doing so outside of the classroom. Electronic portfolios can be a transforming factor culturally and socially. Electronic portfolios are meaningful for basic writers because they have a purpose beyond the classroom. More importantly these students have a voice.

Blog 8 Now You See It: Maybe I was distracted…

Cathy Davidson presents an insightful interpretation of the functionality of people’s brain. In “Now You See It” Davidson asserts that technology and brain science will revamp the way schools and business function in the 21^st century. She hones in on several key concepts, attention blindness through selective attention, disruption and multitasking. She believes that technology is reshaping the way people think and the manner in which they use their brains. Davidson proposes that we try to learn from our selves and try to make sense of those patterns of attention that are normally invisible to us.

Distraction 1: Read the sign. What does it say? Are you sure?

Our brains make associations with well-known phrases, and will negate what we don’t think is there.’ Because we are familiar with this famous phrase, we simply do not see the extra ‘the’. The sign reads “I love Paris in the the springtime”

Davidson makes reference to Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris’s “gorilla experiment” to explain attention blindness. Attention blindness is when we concentrate intensely on one task, [that it] cause us to miss just about everything else (1). While watching the gorilla experiment on Youtube, I not only count the 15 passes between the players in white, but I also see the gorilla walking across the screen. Reading about seeing the gorilla can be a spoiler because every time that I tried to really focus on just counting the passes I got distracted by the gorilla walking across the scene. Based on Simons and Chabris experiment, people miss the gorilla at first because they are selectively paying attention.

The constant rotation of the participants dribbling and passing the ball acts as an illusion factor in the experiment. The black clothing of participants also makes it more difficult for viewer. So, when the gorilla passes across the screen it may go unnoticed to viewers. Davidson comes up with the idea that “attention blindness is the fundamental structuring principle of the brain, and that I [she] believe that it presents us with a tremendous opportunity”(2). This opportunity, which she speaks of, is the aggregate of pooling our “insights to form the whole picture, in other words what we miss can be filled in by others who are involved in the same task per se. Thus, attention blindness or selective attention may cause us to miss things. Therefore, individuals need cultivated distractions in order for them to learn, unlearn and relearn new concepts…as a continuum (19). Or, just maybe your can brain will automatically start multi-tasking so you see both gorilla and count the fifteen passes among the white shirt members. Multi-tasking is divided attention, which is considered the highest level of attention.

Distraction 2:

How many legs does this elephant really have? Count them carefully, and then count once more.

Davidson describes leaning as “the constant disruption of an old pattern, a breakthrough that substitutes something new for something old” (5). Based on Cymblata commercial, Davidson asserts that the creators of this commercial “understands our own patterns of attention and distraction so well that it’s easy for them to hide the negative right there, in plain sight?” I have seen this commercial several times and others like it and I usually laugh at how these advertisements weave in the negative side effects that at times are worse than what a potential patient might be experiencing. Nonetheless, people still purchase this medication.

Davidson believes that distraction is used to persuade us to choose differently because our emotions help shape the things that we give our attention (25). Viewers of this commercial already know the ending to this story—in using cymblata you can reclaim this happy life that depression is preventing you from having.

Distraction 3 Do you see a musician or the girls face?

Our brains make a decision between the negative and positive light in this simple illusion. The musician is a silhouette, facing sideways and playing what appears to be a saxophone. The girl’s face is facing forwards and is starkly lit, with the eyes, nose and mouth in shadow. The woman’s nose and mouth are the musician’s fingers as he plays. The top of her head is fragmented, making it difficult for our brains to work this out and we might see the prominent nose of the musician instead.

So, how do this all ties in with technology and brain science or schools and businesses for the 21st century? We are in the digital age, a significant phenomenon that is going to influence people’s lives, like the invention of writing or the printing press. Multitasking is multidistration asserts Davidson. People shift their attention from one thing to the next over and over again very much in the way people navigate online. According to Davidson, “Multitasking is the ideal mode of the twenty-first century, not just because of our information overload but because our digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment”(6). Hence, an individual can learn just about any information online by a click of the mouse. For example sites like Wikipedia can take a user anywhere on the Internet because of all the links embedded in the websites. The distractions are limitless (distraction 5).

Davidson describes how babies’ brains develop their pathways since babies are the experts at distracting themselves. Babies are constantly distracted by everything around them as they try to figure out their surrounding and other stimuli. However, babies make sense of their world through selective attention because adults teach them what needs a higher order of recognition and what behaviors need to be ignored. On the flip side of things, babies don’t think in a linear and orderly format. Actually, neither do adults. The brain has a system of networks that connects when they needed to complete a task as simple as walking. So a baby learning to walk has to keep trying to connect the right neurons and isolate others in order for them to be able to walk. Over time they get better at connecting the right neurons until walking becomes automatic.

Schools and businesses are designed to follow the linear format. With schools students need to concentrate and focus in the content areas to pass standardize tests. With businesses people specialize in different jobs so they only need to focus on the particular task that is given to them. “If kids must face the challenges of this new, global, distributed information economy, what are we doing to structure the classroom of the twenty-first century to help them? In this time of massive change, we’re giving our kids the test and lessons plans designed for the their great-great-grandparents” (16). The informational age is changing the way students learn. The internet acts similarly like the brain in that just as there are millions of neurons connecting and creating pathways for learning to take place, so are there millions of people connecting online with each other globally creating millions of pathways. The informational age is changing the way business operate because more of the jobs being created aren’t “specialize” and are requiring that more people are able to multitasks. Davidson also hints that many of the jobs that the next generation will be involved in aren’t even created as yet. So the way we are educating our students, that is, to memorize information to do monotonous specialize jobs aren’t practical. So we have miss that point because schools and business have been too focus on the linear model of education and businesses from the industrial era. Davidson believes that people have the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn thus moving along in the time on of this information era.

Blog 7: Decentralization is not the problem

In “Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus”, Shirky focuses on the cumulative surplus of the aggregate; in other words, what is it that people do with their free time? Free time during the 1700s or pre-industrial England was uncommon. Then, people had to work many hours. In addition, with a rapidly growing population and the hardships of industrialization, many people turned to alcohol as the opiate to their despondency. Shirky makes the analogy that many people in the industrialized world have an abundance of free time but they watch a great deal of television with that free time in order to escape their unhappiness (1-4). Shirky refers to the term scale on numerous occasions. Scale is the surplus that the aggregate has offered. It also relates to the amount of time that individuals can give to the collective effort of the aggregate of information.

London Gin Craze Had Roots in Nascent Company

Shirky implies that people can use their cumulative surplus of time to produce a collective knowledge of data, for example, Wikipedia and Ushahidi. Wikipedia and Ushahidi alike make it possible for collective knowledge to disperse globally. Hence, the cumulative surplus of time to create a collective knowledge of data creates limitless possibilities with regard to people’s creativity and in many cases, online interaction. Shirky quotes Jib Fowles in Why Viewers Watch, “Television viewing has come to displace principally (a) other diversions, (b) socializing, and (c) sleep.” Shirky then asserts that a negative impact of watching too much television is that it reduces human contact, which is explored in the ideology of social surrogacy hypothesis (7). Unlike television the Internet connects more people together, especially the younger generations who are willing to use it to create and share information with other people globally (12- 14). Thus they spend less time watching television. That time is being replaced with individuals actively consuming and producing online. Cheaper online tools make affordance for individuals to move away from being passive consumers to more active consumers and/or producers of the collective knowledge.

Boob tube

Like Shirky, James Surowiecki believes in the collective aggregate of the group or crowd. “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them” (XIII). Surowiecki identifies three negative attributes of the collective intelligence: cognitive problems, coordination problem, and cooperation problem. First, cognitive problems have a specific result. Second, the coordination problem calls for the group to understand that each member will be doing the same thing. Third, the cooperation problem calls for the group to work together to achieve the same goal despite their biases (XVII). Surowiecki asserts that these problems are no match for the collective intelligence. However, they must consider the extremes of the collective behavior (XIX).

Surowiecki states, “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.” With regards to Surowiecki’s collective intelligence theory, the CIA and the FBI aggregate of information on potential terrorist threat against America could have alerted the respective correspondents of a potential threat, regardless if they could have averted an attacked on American soil. Surowiecki deliberates over this issue as to whether or not decentralization is a factor. The CIA and the FBI are independent of each other though they serve the same interest, which is to protect American citizens. Surowiecki argues Friedrich Hayek’s, tacit knowledge as being a fourth problem to the collective intelligence, which is “knowledge that can’t be easily summarized or conveyed to others” (71). As a result of decentralization, there isn’t any guarantee that crucial and necessary information can be disseminated before that information becomes worthless to protect American citizens. Surowiecki acknowledges that there is a fourth problem but this could be addressed with making the aggregate of the local and private information into a collective whole like Google (72). This may seem easier said than done. Finding the right balance that Surowiecki alludes to between individual knowledge globally and the collective aggregate could compromise safety if it is not between the specific and local (72). This implies that the cooperation problem between the CIA and FBI may seem more profound.

Another concept that Surowiecki discusses is the decentralization concept. This system worked for Linux because it made affordances for diversity (73). In other words, there isn’t a group of paid programmers who work to rectify technical issues on Linux. This is a brilliant idea. Linux makes affordances for anyone to contribute to Linux programs globally. Surowiecki believes in the collective group’s aggregate. Therefore, remedying a “bug” related problem can be fix by any computer programmer globally; as long as that individual is willing to make time to rectify computer bugs (74). In most cases it seems that these issues are remedied, thus supporting Shirky’s point of view that the scale of the collective aggregate is of great importance.

James Surowiecki like Shirky believes in the collective aggregate of the group or crowd. “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them” (XIII). Surowiecki identifies three negative attributes of the collective intelligence cognitive problems, coordination problem and cooperation problem. First, cognitive problems have a specific result. Second, coordination problem calls for the group to understand that each member will be doing the same thing. Third, the cooperation problem calls for the group to work together to achieve the same goal despite of their biases (XVII). Surowiecki asserts that these problems are no match for the collective intelligence. However, they must consider the extremes of the collective behavior (XIX).

Surowiecki states, “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.” With regards to Surowiecki’s collective intelligence theory, the CIA and the FBI aggregate of information on potential theorists treat on America could have alerted the respective correspondents of a potential treat, regardless if they could have avert an attacked. Surowiecki deliberates over this issue as to weather or not decentralization is a factor. The CIA and the FBI are independent of each other though they serve the same interest, which is, to protect American citizens. Surowiecki argues Friedrich Hayek’s, tacit knowledge as being a fourth problem to the collective intelligence, which is “knowledge that can’t be easily summarized or conveyed to others” (71). As a result of decentralization, there isn’t any guarantee that crucial and necessary information can be disseminated before that information becomes worthless to protect American citizens per se. Surowiecki acknowledges that there is a fourth problem but this could be addressed with a making the aggregate of the local and private information into a collective whole like Google (72). This may seem easier said than done. Finding the right balance that Surowiecki alludes to between individual knowledge globally and the collective aggregate could compromise safety if it’s not between the specific and local (72). This implies that the cooperation problem between the CIA and FBI may seem more profound.

Another concept that Surowiecki discusses is the decentralization concepts. This system worked for Linux because it made affordances for diversity (73). In other words, there isn’t a group of payed programmers who work to rectify technical issues on Linux. This is a brilliant idea. Linux makes affordances for anyone globally to contribute to Linux programs. Surowiecki believes in the collective group’s aggregate. Therefore, remedying a “bug” related problem can done so by any will be a programmer globally who is willing to give time to fixing the this issue (74). In most cases, it seems that these issues are remedied. Thus, supporting Shirky’s point of view that the scale of the collective aggregate is of great importance.

Surowiecki flip flops on his explanation of decentralization and its impact with the CIA and the FBI inability to thwart terrorist attacks on America. He states that the agencies are decentralized, which is crucial to independence and diversity. However, their aggregate of judgment of information was lacking. Surowiecki asserts that if these agencies had a chance to combine their computer databases then they stand a chance of evaluating the facts, which would eventually lead to them creating plausible theories of terrorist attacks. Thus, they may even be able to predict the potential people who threaten the safety of America’s citizens.

In conclusion, it may seem that a larger number of people, especially the younger generation may be more into producing more and consuming more online than the older generation. As to whether or not the older generation is spending more time watching television is yet to be proven. The fact is there is a cognitive surplus and organizations like Linux are making affordances for many people to become more than just consumers but also producers.

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Monday, December 9, 2013

Prezi: Reading and Writing Project

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Company

Product

Customers

Community

Support

Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Blog 12: Myspace versus Facebook: Is there really evidence of social classism?

Blog 10: Electronic portfolios and teaching basic writers

Blog 8 Now You See It: Maybe I was distracted…

Blog 7: Decentralization is not the problem

Monday, December 9, 2013

Prezi: Reading and Writing Project

Present Remotely

Download prezi for:

Present offline on a PC or Mac.

Edit and present offline with Prezi Desktop

Make your likes visible on Facebook?

Copy of Reading and Writing ProjectSaveCancel

Comments (0)

Transcript of Copy of Reading and Writing Project

Company

Product

Customers

Community

Support

Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Blog 12: Myspace versus Facebook: Is there really evidence of social classism?

Blog 10: Electronic portfolios and teaching basic writers

Blog 8 Now You See It: Maybe I was distracted…

Blog 7: Decentralization is not the problem

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