Bebo in the News: Safer Social Networking

While reading Danah Boyd I found a great research site about youth and their learning and experiments with digital media. Boyd and others at Berkley are contributors to this current and readable website. This site on "ethonographic investigation of innovative knowledge cultures" titled, Digital Youth Research: Kids Informal Learning with Digital Media is impressive.

Dipped into several articles, but the one that engaged me and kept me there for awhile was on Bebo and information about the safety that this social networking provides for its users and parents of users. Bebo has a BlogSafety Forum that provides educational information on safe blogging and social networking. Bebo states that this safety blog is about " social networking about the social networks" (Bebo, 2007).

I read a lot about Facebook and MySpace, but had never heard of Bebo a social networking site ranked third most popular and the most sticky site in the in the world(Stoller, 2005). Also voted Peoples Voice by Webby and Best Social Networking site of 2006, Bebo recently appointed Joanna Shields Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships for Google EMEA, as President in its new London office.

Shields' 20-year work history includes senior management positions in several leading technology and internet companies. In her previous position at Google, she built syndication networks around the world and was instumental in developing partnerships with "some of the world's largest media and telecompanies (Gavin, 2007).

Am always pleased to learn new things when blogging and through my research this week found out about the world's third largest social networking system and Shields, a woman making the news as leader in the field of technology.

Steven Levy(2006) asked, Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? and then goes on to talk about Halley Suitt positing on same. The problem is the Halley's Comment blog is by invitation only and can't be read unless one is "invited". Not sure how to get invited, but will keep looking as it appears that Suitt may be a good read.

Can what Levy called a "grass-roots phenomenon" of self-publishing in the blogosphere be exclusive rather inclusive? Levy quotes Suitt as asking "people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking—and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?"

I certainly believe that there are many worthwhile voices out there and would love to hear them, but can't read Suitt's by invitation only blog. Would very much like to read a blog by a woman who writes on the "clubbiness" of blogs and of white people writing to white people. Will instead try to track some of her ideas down through open articles and conversations going on by others on the same topic.

Just learned something new through persistence (kept trying to read Halley's blog) and here is a copy & paste of what I found out.

"Halley's Comment: I've stopped blogging here and Halley's Comment is no more. There is a screen which says you need to be a member to read the blog, but there is no list of "members" or select people who can read the blog. That screen is just a standard feature of Blogger which comes up when you close your blog off. I'll be taking the blog down for good soon. Loyal readers, thank you for your loyalty. If I decide to start another blog, I'll post a link here to that new site."

Not sure where she went or if she will blog again, but will keep checking back. All the postings and writings I am finding about Suitt illustrate she is a good read.

Research on blogging and women bloggers

Still wandering all around the web looking for research on women bloggers, women bloggers who blog about education technology, leadership and higher education. I found a directory resource for women bloggers and an article (Taylor Eisenman) citing research on how infrequently popular male bloggers include female bloggers on their blogroll. This article was based on Clancy Ratcliff's dissertation research. Ratcliff's (2005) research focused on a "case study of gender differentials in discourse on weblogs (often called the “blogosphere”). To that end, I am analyzing the “Where are the women?” debates to ascertain the ways both men and women account for the gender gap in blogging"(Ratcliff, 2005).

Some of the reasons outlined for the gap in this study included:

women aren't self-promoters

women "can't handle agnostic nature of political discourse" of blogs

women use pseudonyms more than males

women don't blog about politics

While Clancy's(2005)dissertation research has a focus on rhetoric and politics it does ask the question, "Where are the women" and will provide me with more research based information to answer my questions about women blogging about this blog's areas of focus. I am looking forward to learning more about blogging and the discourse about women who blog over the course of this year and will link this site to Blogs by Women soon.

English posts that contain Women Bloggers per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Blogs, blog persona, and back to leadership issues

Went in to check my gmail account today and found an invitation to a EdTechTalk. It was past the date for the talk, but went there anyway to view past and upcoming calendar information on the talks with "educators dedicated to helping those involved in educational technology explore, discusss, and collaborate in its use". Started meandering around and found information about something called a Tumblelog.

You can create a blog with "less fuss" using a free tool called Tumblr. These blogs are highly visual and less text based than most blogs. The less fuss part is intriguing, but would probably prove to be more fuss for me as I would then need a digital camera (must be one of the few people in the world without one in my cell phone), and would spend a lot of time learning how use it and taking photos for the Tumblelog. To get an idea of what one of these might look like, visit Tumbleo.

Did some more meandering while thinking about blogs and how some portray the strong personas of their authors and others don't. Went searching for more information about persona and blogging and found another woman blogger, Dr. Helen, who blogged about this and women and leadership. The posting about women and leadership was connected to a MSN article titled, Men rule ---at least in workplace attitudes .

Food for thought from MSN , “To be a leader you have to be decisive and take charge. That fits fine for men, but when women do it they get labeled.” The jist of the article in a list:

men are still seen as more effective leaders than women, by both men and women

women don't want to be too confident or authoritative, lest they get called the "B" word

women worry about being called wishy-washy, indecisive, or emotional

most men would rather have a male supervisor and so would most women

in our society leadership is still a code word for masuline

Oh yeah, and Dr. Helen said, "If You Want to be a Leader--Quit talking about your Freaking Grandkids"!

Blogging to learn and learning to blog

My initial reasons for blogging were to learn and read about other women bloggers interested in education technology, higher education and leadership, but while I have doing just that ---am finding a blog may not be just about writing. Sorting through all the tools out there that can help give a blog a personality could require some time. Flickr, Song Spots, YouTube, Wiki, were not sites that I visted or talked about much back in December. Now, in January, February and March women blog readings and daily visits to these sites and others are help me to see that finding, reading about, playing with, and integrating these technologies into my skill set may help me to express myself with more than just words.

Am enjoying the fee free education that learning how to blog is providing me. March finds me making my my way around a conference wiki, using Flickr to store, upload, and ta-da posting a slide show of a co-presented session at the ODCE conference focused on faculty perceptions of courses created by others. Next thing I plan to learn is how to post so photos, presentations, and videos are embedded in the posting and not just provided through links.

Online Course Peer Review

Lake Superior College's faculty member Susan Bradshaw is blogging. Was thrilled to find another woman blogger and to visit her blog which is also a great resource on Online Course Peer Review.

Coincidentally, attended a conference in Ohio (ODCE 2007) where Quality Matters: An Inter-institional Process for Improving Quality Online, presented by Brenda Boyd of Miami Unviersity was recognized for the Best Session Award. She received a plaque and a free registration to the next conference as part of the award.

While the Quality Matters FIPSE grant ended, the organization still exists and offers institutional subscriptions, training, and a range of fee-based services.

To find out more about QM, the course review process, and the peer review process vist the QM web: http://qualitymatters.org/ and be sure to check out Susan Bradshaw's blog to get a sense of how Lake Superior College and other faculty in the Minnesota State Colleges University System and Minnesota Online have implemented QM into practice.

Success it is not the same as leadership but

Putting some ideas together for an upcoming presentation as well as reading blogs. Went on a search to look around for presentations tips and found excellent tips,resources, and samples of effective presentations (TED) from Garr Reynold's blog titled PresentationZen.

Watched a YouTube post of a short video by a gentleman named Richard St. John. The presentation and the information in it was of interest to me for these reasons:

1. The speaker was good and the visuals were very well done.
2. The St. Clair presentation has information in it that could provide one with ideas on how to lead as well as how to have success .

At least 3 blog posts per month: One on leadership

Went on a miniweb search to do my one post for the week on leadership. My search affirmed some of the reasons I believe women may not be recognized as leaders. Despite the recent selection of a woman as Harvard’s president (Women Increasingly Likely To Be Leaders in U.S. Higher Education) and the statistics from the BizDean's Blog that women make up slightly more than half of U.S. jobs created in the first part of the new decade the leadership issues from old decades do not seem to be going away.

Listened to, but did not enjoy Newsweek’s Barbara Kantrowitz msnbc audio on Women in Leadership that outlined women’s role models and tips for success. Perhaps women are not promoted to leadership positions because of the lack of women as mentors (most women in this interview were mentored by men). Perhaps it's related to this sad, shortlist of tips the women interviewees provided to aspiring women leaders.

Sample leadership lessons shared in the audio:

1. Never cry in the office. (This was identified as Number 1!)
2. Don’t create obstacles for yourself.
3. Be passionate about your work and what you do.
4. Work hard and don’t let criticism distract you.
5. Don’t sell yourself short.

Wonder how many male leaders got their positions by following a list of similar lessons? Wonder if the newly hired woman president at Harvard listed never crying in the office as a leadership strength on her CV?

Recent research from the Center for High Performance Development (CHPD), on leadership qualities among male and female managerial staff had results that indicated women performed better than men on three of the main leadership quality measures (thinking, developing and achieving) and equally on the fourth (inspiring).

Chris Parry of the CHPD stated, “ women are given fewer opportunities in a male-run organization” and that men are better at “getting exposure, being visible, communicating upwards, getting people to know” what they are doing. Women, according to Parry expect to get promoted on ability and do not display the self-confidence that men do in the workplace.

Oh, and did I mention, “the wage gap persists: In 2005, the median weekly pay for women was $486, or 73% of that for men -- $663 (Biz Dean’s Talk)”. I could just cry, but I won’t, as I am an aspiring leader.

Flickr and copyright

Was led to some thought provoking ideas related to copyright while reading the Accidental Pedagogy blog.

The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism

One of the things Lethem (2007) wrote about photography struck me and I quote:

"It's worth noting, then, that early in the history of photography a series of judicial decisions could well have changed the course of that art: courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he could capture and print an image. Was the photographer stealing from the person or building whose photograph he shot, pirating something of private and certifiable value? Those early decisions went in favor of the pirates. Just as Walt Disney could take inspiration from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., the Brothers Grimm, or the existence of real mice, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source. The world that meets our eye through the lens of a camera was judged to be, with minor exceptions, a sort of public commons, where a cat may look at a king."

Am writing about this today, because even after reading what Flickr has posted on its website and completing several searches on copyright related to use of Flickr images am still not sure if I am pirating from the pirates. Because of this blogs title thought it would be fun to find and post beautiful images of portals and I found a lot of gorgeous images on Flickr. I have been saving some of them as images in a My Pictures folder on my PC and was planning to rotate the images over the course of the next few months.

Some of the information found in my searches led me to believe that some folks on Flickr license their images through Creative Commons, but if that is the case I am not finding the information. Also, found some folks on Flickr pointing fingers at people who are using images without proper attribution.

Right now there is a single image of a portal by a photographer that identifies himself as, astrovine. Under the image I have carefully and prominently displayed the following: Italian Portal by astovine. I am wondering, is that enough? While there are active forums discussing copyright issues on Flickr, there are not definitive answers to people's questions in the forums. You can view astovine photos and his profile on Flickr, but I can't find anything on his site or on the Flickr site that makes me sure it is okay to use this image.

Might be nice if there was some information on the Flickr site and and on individual profiles that outlined how the photos can and can be used. The Creative Commons license would help people like me who come looking and want to use photos of portals ethically. Perhaps the information is there and I am just not finding it, or maybe all the issues surrounding copyright and intellectual property related to blogging and on the Internet were solved and I missed the announcement :-)

Who knew?

Truly had no clue when I started this that there was so much to read, see, learn, and do in the blogosphere. Even my goals seem diminshed by the quantity of of information that is available on topics that of interest to me.

I thought of a folk song I heard years ago with lyrics focused on the hard time women have in life cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc.. Many versions of the lyrics to the Housewife's Lament are all over the web, but could not find out who authored the Housewife's Lament. Here is part of the lament:

Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever
On a far little rock in the midst of the sea
My one chance of life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me
Alas! 'Twas no dream; ahead I behold it
I see I am helpless my fate to avert
She lay down her broom, her apron she folded
She lay down and died and was buried in dirt.

While it used to be that I just thought about the irony of the last statement in terms of keeping my living space clean, now the words hit home in a new way because of the waves of technology and information seem to get bigger and bigger and the need to keep up-to-date seems to grow exponentially.

Am thinking I will easily find 25 women bloggers writing on topics of interest to me before the year is out. May well need to beef up the numbers and revise the goal statement over the course of the next few months. On the plus side, found good resources on WomenGamers and enjoyed a quick read of The kids are alright: How the gamer generation is changing the world.

Framing this Blog and Related Writing

I had fun this first month of blogging and as a I slogged and poked around the web I learned a few things about blogging I already knew and much about blogging that I hadn't a clue!

Because I have a purpose of finding women blogging about education technology, higher education, and leadership and in answering my question about where the women bloggers are.I decided to frame this blog and the related writings in a goal setting exercise using 5 tips found today in Enterprising Women magazine. Beller (2005) wrote:

1. Having a vision is important to goal setting.

2. Writing a plan to achieve goals is needed.

3. Sharing your goals with others will keep you accountable.

4. Letting go of the outcome and trusting yourself along the way helps.

5. Enjoying one’s journey toward achieving goals and related successes is the best!

ProEdPortal Blog Goals

Vision: My vision is to learn more about a new (to me) writing medium and to connect with bloggers interested in some of the same topics that I am interested in.

Purpose: To engage in writing activities and conversations that fuel ideas for articles, writings, musings, and that help me learn new skills.

Goals: Shared goals to promote my own accountability

1. Blog for one year.

2. Create and post at least 3 blog postings per month.

a. At least one of the postings should connect to leadership.

3. Stay connected to set blog topics, e.g., reflecting on and posting my thoughts and opinions on technology, higher education, and leadership.

4. Find at least 25 women bloggers who blog on similar topics and link them to ProEdPortal.

5. Connect blogging to at least 3 professional development activities over the course of the next 12 months.

a. Conference presentation

b. Submit a paper to a journal

c. Host a webinar

6. At the end of one year reflect, summarize year’s activities in the blog, and decide whether to continue.

Outcomes and the Journey: An Action Research Project that will unfold as the year goes by.

Reading Danah Boyd Writings on Blogs

A newbie and a latecomer to this whole blog thing am wanting to read and find out about other women who blog and have interests similar to mine. One of the most interesting and prolific women bloggers I am reading is Danah Boyd --apophenia. Boyd has been a blogger for a longtime and has massive archives and links out to other blogs and bloggers. Can only admire and be awe of all the blogging and article writing she does while enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Berkley!

A few things she writes about blogging are relevant to why I decided to experiment with blogging, for example:

1.I see blogging as way to be engaged with a community of people with like interests and can recognize the "social aspects of blogging"(Boyd, 2006).

2. In a way feel like this is Action Research, as I walk through producing
"semi-regular expressions" under what Boyd, calls a "digital roof".

3. Each new post is connected to my self-assigned readings as I explore this medium. Not sure yet how they all connect. In some respects this is just freewriting and eventually I will need to reflect and respond not only to my readings, but will need to capture my thoughts about all as this blogging stuff and to figure out what it all means. Does this mean I am "blogging to the blog itself"?


On a separate, but related topic as a parent of young adults (20-somethings), her musings and articles have helped me understand facebooking & myspacing a little better. Did not reduce all my concerns :-), but did put them in perspective. Her list of her articles, publications, presentations on topics related to this medium is well worth a bookmark.

Just looking around,did you know there is a blog born every second?

Through GeekyMom found a higher education site and an article titled, A lesson in video viral. Basically a fun to read story about a faculty person who created a 5-minute video clip for YouTube and forwarded it to some friends, who forwarded to friends,then a blogger posted the video and it was viewed by 806,077 people within just a few days. Soon folks are calling this video a "must-see video for anyone wanting to understand the hottest features of the Web". In Wesch’s piece, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” The nonlinear quality of digital text is outlined in a fun, simple, innovative and highly visual manner. If you have not viewed it, you can by clicking on this link to Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Making my way through blog lit

While wandering, reading, and reflecting on blogging am working to ground myself in what is known about blogs. Worked my way this evening through the PEW’s (2006) Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers and some eye-opening statistics. Some of the blogging statistics I found of interest in the survey (n=7, 012) included

1.Majority of bloggers are well educated, 37% of the respondents had college degrees compared with the 27% of the Americans with college degrees
2. Well over a third, 38% of bloggers are American knowledge based professionals compared with 13% of the American knowledge based professionals in the workplace
3.Bloggers are overwhelming young, 84% of the respondents were under 50
4.Rather even in gender, 54% of bloggers Male and 46% are female
5.57 million people read blogs and 12 million keep them
6.Older bloggers are a minority, only 16% of respondents over 50 blog
7.51% of bloggers have less than a year’s experience

Could the lack of women bloggers on topics such as; education technology, higher education, and leadership be linked to numbers of women with college degrees and considered knowledge based professional in the workplace? Maybe there just are not that many of us to begin with, let alone enough of us in numbers to make a dent on the Technorati’s biggest blogs in the blogosphere.

More pondering on women bloggers

So, here I was thinking I had noticed something about blogging that others hadn't and decided to start looking around to find out why there weren't more women bloggers. Since beginning my search around the blogspere and my first baby steps at blogging have found that I am not the only person wondering why there aren't more women doing this. AND, of course have found out that I am about two years or more behind other folks who have pondered on the same. Steve Levy, blogged about this on MSNBC, Chris Nolan asked the question and then listed 10 reasons why she thinks women don't blog. She also listed some reasons why she believes women are behind the curve on all this. Nolan's #1 on the list is that more men are techies and her #2 is that "men prefer to link to and to read men like them".

I like to read and will link to others writing about education technology, higher education, and leadership. Although, I'll look for both men and women have expertise in these areas and are articulate, but mostly will look for women bloggers who have the same interests. I suspect that as a woman I too will prefer to link to and read women like me.

Where are the women bloggers?

This is a question I asked myself and men bloggers I knew a few months ago. Since then I learned that many women are blogging and on topics that I am interested in. Interestingly, a woman named Lisa Guernsey was wondering the same thing in Telling all online. It's a man's world (isn't it?),(March 2003). I had the same thought as Lisa when I started looking at the blogs in fall of 2006(Gee, am I behind the blog curve!)

As I poked around and read blogs in late 2006, I just wasn't finding the kinds of blogs on topics that I wanted to read written by women. So, I sent emails to the two Minnesota bloggers I knew, Barry Dahl and Al Essa and asked them to send me the names of women bloggers they tracked.

One of the names I got was Glenda Morgan a woman whose excellent research on course management systems informed my dissertation was blogging.It appears I am tracking Morgan again as I continue my research and look at best practice in education technology, higher education, and now blogging.

All of the bloggers above pointed me to other women bloggers and am finding others along the blogging trails, but more about that later.

Teachers blog to vent, to learn

Found this information about how K-12 educators are using blogs in a recent ASCD Newsletter. According the a Houston Chronicle news article,teachers across the nation are using their own blogs to vent frustrations and defend public education, but they walk a fine line with administrators when airing school business in public is concerned. Houston Chronicle (1/29)

My foray into blogging is all about learning right now, although I may do some venting later on. In reading this article and looking at the links it provided to educator blogs I was glad to see women bloggers listed. One of the things that got me started thinking about a blog of my own was that I was not finding many women who blog about education technology, higher education, and leadership.

Am finding more and more women bloggers on topics I am interested in as I look around and will use my blog to lead others to those I find.

A Starting Point

Portals consist of web pages that act as a starting points.

Also see Wikipedia on the many descriptions on the use of the term portal.