On Sunday we changed our clocks to summer time here in Sweden, and for the first time I have now experienced one of the difficulties of global online collaboration… Monday, we had a real-time session with our distance students, and one of them who lives in the US almost missed the whole thing. I sent him a last minute reminder that we were to begin an hour early and fortunately he was able to join us almost on time.

Olson & Olson (2000), whom we’re reading for our PhD course, see different time zones as one of the reasons why distance still matters when collaborating online. So far, this has never really been a problem for me, but maybe this is because the students I have been working with have found the real-time sessions and the opportunities to discuss with their classmates so valuable that they haven’t complained about getting up in the middle of the night to take part (as some have had to do). Having different dates for changing to summer time does seem confusing, though. Is anyone familiar with the reasoning behind this? Considering the increasing number of online collaborations, it seems strange that Europe and the US start observing daylight saving time a week apart. My guess is that it won’t be long before we will start observing daylight saving time at the same date throughout the connected world. Any bets for when this will happen?

On a side note, I can say that we now have daylight until at least 7 pm and each day it’s getting better! Also, we have the best part of the winter ahead of us, with nice temperatures and much sun while there is still enough snow left to go skiing or snowmobiling – yippee!

I have finally found some time to work with my article on affordances in oral CMC, and again I find myself struggling with the concept of ‘affordances’. I have written a theory section mainly based on Hutchby’s reasoning and notion of Communicative Affordances, linking this to Gibson and Norman. The more other sources I read, I feel that this section needs to be clarified. Here are some issues I need to contemplate further (attentive readers will recognize some topics from previous posts):

- What types of affordances am I interested in here? Technology Affordances (Gaver 1991), Communicative Affordances (Hutchby 2002), Social Affordances (Bradner et.al. 1999), Affordances for sociality (Gaver 1996) etc.?
- Different levels of affordances (medium vs. communicative situation)
- The role of the social context and of interaction
- Nested/sequential affordances, real/false/perceptible/hidden affordances (Gaver 1991)
- Affordances and conventions (Norman 1999)

I hope to be able to pull this all together in a model which makes sense and which is still true to Gibson’s original definition of the term (see McGrenere & Ho 2000 for an overview of the differences between Gibson and Norman’s use of the term). I wonder if it is workable?

You can read some of my thoughts on affordances in relation to technological determinism/instrumentalism in the HUMlab blog.

Earlier this week, I participated in an inspirational day for ICT and learning, arranged by the Centre of Educational Technology here at the university. The speakers gave examples both of how they have used ICT in the past and what they see as innovative uses in the future, and I sure feel inspired! (One of the speakers was Brian Hudson, who previously gave a HUMlab seminar on a similar topic – my reflections can be found here). I should take advantage of this buzz and seriously get working on the chapter that I have had accepted to be published in a Swedish book on ICT in language learning. It is going to be very interesting to write about my research in Swedish – I’m sure it will be a bit tricky, but, who knows, it might even give me some new insights. I might also use this inspiration to launch a project which I have been planning for a long time – a resource page with tips for language teachers consisting of my own and others’ findings on this topic. Before getting too carried away, though, I should remind myself that I *really* should (read: must!) prioritize thesis writing, so I’m afraid this project will have to be further postponed. I’m sure I’ll have further opportunities to get inspired again!

Over the last couple of semesters I have been involved in developing the oral component of our net based courses, and this semester I’m also helping with the marking of some student assignments. Imagine my excitement when I learnt that the theme for these assignments relates to different aspects of cyberspace (boundaries, governing, identity, education etc.). I’m not exaggerating when I say that I am thoroughly enjoying reading the students’ often very insightful comments on these issues, not least since they relate so closely to my research interests.

One recurring remark that I give concerns the influence of physical geography on the activities in cyberspace. I refer to our experiences in the Moblogging Jokkmokk project, where the majority of the visitors to our blog were locals, and link this to Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin’s claim in their book Mapping Cyberspace that information is geographically bound. Today when I was reading a colleagues new blog, I found more examples to illustrate this point. Here, Daniel Skog counters the argument that the Swedish community LunarStorm seems to erase geographical boarders by referring to how these platforms often do support local networks. I agree that it appears as if the view that internet makes the local community less important should be replaced with a view that it is rather providing new ways for maintaining local communities. The internet can thus be a useful tool for enhancing both local and global interactions.

Lisbeth Klastrup points us to information about the Persistent Conversation Minitrack of the annual HICSS conference in Hawaii in January 2007. Submission deadline is March 31. I feel very tempted to submit, both considering that I have heard about this conference and its relevance to my research many times before, and, admittedly, because I would love to go to Hawaii. I have again applied for a scholarship to go to Stanford this fall, and if I have better luck than last time, the trip to Hawaii might not even be all that expensive. But, having learnt my lesson, I am certainly not going to take anything for granted this time around.

Lately, I have been searching the web to find information about key-stroke logging. I want to learn more about whether this type of technology could be useful in my gathering of material for my research. Of course, I would never use it without the consent of the person at the computer, but rather it could be a convenient way of getting the information that I am after for my analysis directly in a text file instead of capturing it with a video camera and then transcribing it. What strikes me is that this is certainly not the main use of these programs according to the producers. Here is one example:

- “You are at work and your child is home from school.
- She receives an email from John at 3:00 PM.
- Within seconds, you receive a COPY of that email sent to your email address.
- A few minutes later, she replies to John’s email.
- Within seconds, you receive a COPY of what she sent to John.”

I think it is frightening to see how they picture you using key-stroke logging mainly for surveillance purposes, and especially that they expect you to spy on your children. It reminds me of this, which I could never see myself using either.

In connection with International Women’s Day, my colleague Stephanie has started a blog on the topic of women and technology: women@tech.

Here’s an excerpt from Stephanie’s description of the project:
“Wednesday the 8th of March is International Women’s Day. On the eve of this day many women will blog in support of women’s rights. We, at HUMlab, will liveblog the experience of being a woman from two stations, one on the university campus and one in downtown Umea. We will attempt to capture ‘being a woman’ through audio, text, picture, collaborative sidewalk art, as well as giving women a change to blog in their own words. There is a twist, however! You get the chance to participate by sending in your digital pictures to our flickr account.”

Read the whole description here.

Be sure to check out this blog on the 8th of March, but also before and after, since the discussions and reporting have already begun and will continue also after the 8th.

The other day I attended a get-together for people from the university and the local industry, arranged by Uminova Innovation, Connect Norr and Innovationsbron AB. I had the opportunity to present my research, and it pushed me to think about how my results can be applied. This is not a new thought to me, but on the contrary I have always had a need to see some practical uses of my research in order to feel motivated.

One practical application I mentioned in my talk is that I like to believe that my results can be used when developing platforms for efficient communication, since my project focuses on how the affordances of different media are actually employed, and also on what media are used for what type of activity. I also see a potential future market in distance education, where I think my results will be applicable when developing or choosing platforms for online interaction (not least for communicative competence practice in language education). From a methodology point of view I also think that my research should be valuable in other areas, not least when trying to find ways of analyzing and visualizing complex data.

I was also asked about what I picture myself working with after my dissertation is finished. Some examples I can think of are teaching and researching at the University (English, or in a more interdisciplinary context), working with distance education in one way or another, working with interaction design, or working as a consultant for a communications company. One of the participants suggested that doctoral students should have mentors from the business world to teach them about entrepreneurship. In his view, humanities scholars should be made aware of the fact that there is money to be made also in the cultural sector and take better advantage of this. He also emphasized that you don’t always need to sell a product, but that you can also learn to make money on your skills and your knowledge.

I should probably devote some more attention and thought to the life after the dissertation…