Projects
A number of social networking and community of practice projects have used the free social networking hosted service Ning. Both examples are set up as invitation only communities.
Leeds CAST – Conference for A Level Sociology Teachers at Leeds University. This conference is run every few years and the community is reopened and refurbished as required. It provides a pre-conference meeting place and a post-conference facility for continuing discussions and interactions between presenters and delegate as well as between delegates. We have found this has had the useful bonus of facilitating interactions between Schools in the West Yorkshire area.
The Bauman Institute- a research institute hosted in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds where Zygmund Bauman was Professor of Sociology from 1972 to 1990 when he retired. He continues as an Emeritus Professor of Sociology within the School at Leeds up to the present day. The Institute is scheduled for official launch in September 2010 but the on-line community has already achieved a global membership of academic and research staff and postgraduate students.
Researching in a Web 2.0 World
In preparation: a one day workshop aimed at research postgraduates and early career research staff. It will take place in one of our computer clusters at the University of Leeds. This will be a mixture of presentations and hands-on practicals. The session will start with a practical exercise for everyone to set up a wiki page on the Leeds Mediawiki and then to use this to keep notes on the day’s presentations and reflections on the practical sessions ending in a section of what, if anything, they intend to follow up and develop.
The first presentation will be a detailed account of why they should be interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools to develop a personal research environment and network, the nature of the so-called ‘new knowledge economy’ and the changes to ‘mode 2′ knowledge construction processes and practices. This will contain ideas and information on digital footprint and digital reputation and will cover the new forms of information literacy required, and the new opportunities to operate effectively in collaborative environments to both create knowledge and manage knowledge. The practicals will introduce wikis, the full range of Google Docs, twitter, social bookmarking, group applications, use of RSS, forms of real-time communication (text, audio and video), exploring the blogosphere and other sorts of on-line resources and, finally, engaging with the blogosphere. Unlike other events I have participated in this one will not assume that everyone will want to start a blog for themselves. The event will also be used to introduce an on-line environment I have constructed to continue to support the delegates and help them discuss and develop their ideas. This workshop will be available in modified form, as required, for other groups and institutions.
Public Sociology
This project is a response and contribution to current debates about the lack of engagement between specialist knowledge producers and scientists and the lay public and therefore the lack of contribution to informed public discourse. The project is developing a Wordpress site where a number of academic and , research staff and research postgraduates can report on their current reseearch, publish ‘think’ pieces and comment on current affairs from a sociological and social policy perspective. The challenge for this project is organising and enabling the contributers rather than issues with the technology.