had my first meeting with my two supervisors - John and Sengchee - today. when i first met John a couple of weeks' back, he suggested keeping a log of my journey to the doctorate. as i discovered more about what others' have already written about the kinds of things i'd like to investigate, i encountered the term 'social software'. Social software is, in a nutshell, software which augments interactions between existing social groups. it kind of treads the middle ground between the doomsday Luddite scenario on the one hand, and the head-over-heels proponents of technology on the other. social software includes email, groupware, messaging systems, systems which serve as introductory middlemen, trust systems which facilitate trade, and so on. weblogs are another example of social software. so i had the brainwave that i would use social software to learn about social software.
that is the genesis of this blog.
while a lot has already been written about social software (given its recency - it emerged as a popular term circa 2002), i've not come across many attempts at integrating discussions on social software with the mobile internet. i think i can make a contribution here.
so the second strand which i am trying to bring into my eventual research would be that inspired by the manhattan project 'annotate space', by Andrea Moed. go check it out, it's very cool. this project takes advantage of 'location awareness' among handhelds. so in addition to information being delivered to the learner 'just in time', we have information delivery 'just in place'.
so what i've got to do sometime this week, before my next meeting with my two sups, is to develop a research proposal based on the outline which the three of us agreed upon today. more specifically, my homework is to develop some research questions from which i can flesh out microstudies. i would also like to make a little more explicit the links between my proposed research and the existing syllabi.
i'm not going to spoil the surprise by letting you know too much yet - i guess i might post the proposal here in the not too distant future, so look out for it - i'd be happy to hear your comments :-)
happy blogging!
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