My PhD Blog

As some of you might know, the students at Aalborg University are studying under what is called “The Aalborg Model”, which means that they do problem oriented project work in groups. Therefore, they hand in a rather huge (usually 100-120 pages) project report each semester dealing with an open-ended problem of their own choosing.

Formerly, each group would defend their project during a group exam lasting approxemately two or three hours. This semester, however, we were not allowed to conduct the group exams due to a resolution carried out by the government saying that group exams are not allowed at the Danish universities; the students have to sit for an examination individually. Therefore, our students studying under “The Aalborg Model” are forced to defend their joint projects during an individual exam.

Because of that, my January has been more than usually busy. I just counted that I have held 32 individual oral exams this past weeks (in stead of eight group exams as it would have been in the good old days).

Even though all the exams went really well and the students had produced some interesting projects, I cannot help but feel that it is a real pity that they cannot defend them together. Not only is it more time consuming for me as the examiner to prepare 32 different individual 30 minute-exams rather than eight group exams, but it is also a shame that the great discussions and the high level of abstraction, that usually are part of a group exam, now disappear.

Well, I just wanted to let you know why I have been so absent on the blog lately - and tell you that now the exam rush is over I will be blogging about the many interesting upcoming activities I am attending - e.g. a PhD course next week, a trip to Berlin and Safer Internet Day 2008 on February 12.

More about that in blog posts to come

Please notice that I have a new office phone number. See contact info.

Today I have an article out on the Danish internet portal Kommunikationsforum. The article is called “Hvorfor fænger Facebook?” (Why is Facebook fascinating?) In the article I describe 10 fascinating phenomenons about Facebook. I do so by drawing some parallels between Danish youngsters’ use of social network sites and how grown-ups in Denmark are using Facebook at the moment.

The article is only in Danish, but can be read here.

As my first blog post in 2008 I hereby invite all the readers of “My PhD Blog” to participate in a little post-holiday exercise :-D.

It is a brainstorm on all the different categories of social network sites that exist at the moment. I will start by listing the categories I can think of - with exemplary sites. Please feel free to add more. And feel free to correct me if you think that some of my categories, or examples used, are off.

I am aware that some of the sites I mention will fall into more than one category. Many of the sites are - because of my research interests - Danish, but I would like to know about international examples as well.

Social network site categories

1. Youth - e.g. Arto, NationX, SKUM, LunarStorm, Bebo
2. Friendship - e.g. Facebook, Friendster
3. Games/fun - e.g. Habbo Hotel, Netstationen
4. Business/CV - e.g. LinkedIn
5. Music - e.g. LastFM, MySpace, myvoice
6. Video/entertainment - e.g. YouTube, Vix.dk
7. Photos - e.g. Flickr
8. Pets - e.g. Catster, Dogster
9. Religion - e.g. MyChurch, GodTube
10. Academic/professional - e.g. KForum
11. Political - e.g. Radikale.net
12. Libraries - e.g. Vores Bibliotek
13. Discussion - e.g. Mingler
14. Death - e.g. Mindet.dk
15. Enemies/hate - e.g. Enemybook, Hatebook, IFHY (I Fucking Hate You)
16. Anti-social - e.g. isolatr, NoSo, Snubster
17. School - e.g. HG Space, Ekademia
18. Design - e.g. Threadless, NotABrand
19. Children - e.g. GoSupermodel
20. Blogging - e.g. Blog.dk
21. Sleep and wake up - e.g. Sleep.Fm

Those were the different categories I could think of. There must be several others

(I know that some of the sites I used as examples would perhaps not fall under the definition of a social network site - that depends on the definition…)

Today it is exactly one year since I started “My PhD Blog” and it is time to do a little status update.

I have written 52 blog posts during this one year period. That equals one blog post per week,which I think is acceptable. Especially, considering the fact that I only blog about my activities as a PhD student or subjects related to youth and online social networking.

Here are some other blog stats provided by WordPress:

As for my PhD project, I must admit that this first year of the project period has gone by extremely fast. I am amazed at how much time goes by with non-project related stuff - such as teaching, supervising, reading and answering e-mails, attending meetings and network activities, writing papers and articles, giving talks, attending conferences and PhD courses, giving press interviews and other stuff. All of which are really exciting activities, but only very peripherally related to my project.

When it comes to my project I have been engaged in data collecting. I have conducted two qualitative online questionnaires which altogether generated more than 3000 answers. Moreover, I have been doing different kind of ethnographic studies. I would label it “ethnography” rather than “virtual ethnography”, because some of my data collection take place outside cyberspace. Actually, the more I think about it, I dislike to concept of “virtual ethnography” or “online ethnography”, because I think that online social networking cannot be separated from offline life. That is something I will get back to in a later blog post. Among other things, I am working on a concept I call “nexus ethnography”. But more about that in the new year.

I hope that 2008 will be a productive year and I look forward to blog about my activities.

Happy New Year to all.

I have a new, small article out in the December newsletter from Insafe on social networking. The article is in English (for once) and is called “It’s all about real life: On youth and online social networking”. Here I present some of the results from the survey I have been doing in collaboration with The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People.

Read the article here.

Arto recently launched “Arto Idol” as part of their social network site. Here the users can participate in an online talent show (similar to “Scenen er din”, “American Idol” or “Britain’s Got Talent”) within six categories. Each month the site will elect the 10 best participants in the competition.

It is possible for the users to comment on each other’s videos - very much similar to YouTube. What strikes me so far is that the users comment really positively on each other’s videos. This is similar to the positive and loving atmosphere that can be found in their use of the picture galleries or in their profile texts (as I have written about in this article). I will definitely keep an eye on this new initiative. Does anyone know of something similar in other countries?

Check out Arto Idol here.

Another colleague of mine, Marianne Georgsen from e-Learning Lab, is defending her PhD thesis this week. This will take place Wednesday at the Department of Education, Learning and Philosophy.

Here is a short description of the thesis (in Danish):

Afhandlingen handler om kommunikationens rolle i samarbejdsprocessen, med særlig vægt
på kommunikationens betingelser, når samarbejdet medieres af IKT. Der sættes fokus på
betingelserne for den videomedierede interaktion og på identifikation af de ressourcer,
brugerne tager i anvendelse for at kunne samarbejde i virtuelle omgivelser.

Read the whole summery or see the invitation.

Good luck to Marianne

Last week I attended a seminar in e-Learning Lab within the Network on ICT and Learning. The topic of the seminar was “Communities of Learning” and international guest Caroline Haythornthwaite presented her interesting thoughts on how to develop and maintain online learning communities. After that some of the members of the network presented their experiences with creating online (e-learning) communities.

One of the practians presenting a case was Tommy Møllegaard Siim from EUC Nordvest (a Danish vocational education centre) who had been engaged in creating a community (or, as I would call it, a social networking site) for the HG students called HG Space. Here, the students can create profiles, chat, blog and upload videos - and the school can post information about school activities, changes in timetables and so on. Also, there is a “wall” displaying cool profiles - very similar to other popular social networking sites.

It is really interesting to see how this school has embraced the concept of social networking - an idea I have been urging many schools to take up during my lectures the last couple of years. And so far, it seems that it has been a real success for ECU Nordvest - at least according to Tommy Møllegaaard Siim and the activity on the site.

Instead of being afraid of online social networking I think that schools should do something similar to this - and turn social networking into something positive which is connected to the school and school activities.

At the moment there is a debate going on in Denmark about the fact that Arto has created a domain called ingencensur.dk which allows students to access Arto even though the site is blocked at their school. This has caused many schools to criticise and rage against Arto.

However, in stead of worrying about their students using social networking sites I think that the schools should embrace social networking or even create their own site, like EUC Nordvest has done. Young people (and the rest of us, hence the popularity of Facebook) have an urge to connect with one another online - so why not within a school setting?

My good friend and colleague Anne-Mette Albrechtslund just got a PhD scholarship from the Danish Research Council. Anne-Mette is interested in user-creativity in computer games and she will start her project in February. Congrats to Anne-Mette (who will then continue to be part of our research centre at e-Learning Lab).