Session description: We will introduce programs that attract wider audiences to science, math, and engineering at various institutions/education levels, programs that mentor students (high school, undergrad & grad students) in research and education excellence. How Social Media tools can be used to raise the profile of and build support networks for under-represented scientists and engineers.
The session was led by Anne Jefferson (@highyanne) with assistance from Lyndell Bade (@lyndellmbade), Evelyn Lynge, and Zuska. DNLee (@FeteSociety) was to have led the session with Anne but did not make it to the conference. The presentation included research conducted by Pat Campbell.
Here’s the session wiki page.
Category Archives: Blogospheric science
#scio10 aftermath: collecting my tweets from the conference sessions.
Last night I arrived home safely from ScienceOnline2010. As expected, the conference was tremendously engaging and useful, as well as being a rollicking good time — so much so that the only blog post I managed to post while there was the Friday Sprog Blog. (Major props to the elder Free-Ride offspring for taking notes from our conversation and letting me bring them with me.)
However, as some others have noted (for example, drdrA), I did manage to maintain an online presence by “Tweeting” my real-time notes from the conference sessions I attended. And, as a step toward blogging something sensible about those sessions, I’m going to compile my Tweets for each and put them up as posts — sort of “open notebook” blog post writing.
Let me pause a moment for a few observations on the experience of Tweeting a conference session as opposed to taking notes in my trusty notebook (which is what I usually do).
#scio10 preparation: Where does civility hit the skids?
Today, on account of the fact that I’m pinned down doing course updating activities, I present you with a poll. In answering the question, go ahead and use whatever is your preferred definition of “civility”.
For which topic do you expect online civility to collapse the fastest?(survey)
Of course, use the comments to discuss to your heart’s content (including where I went wrong in constructing the poll options).
#scio10 preparation: A very brief proto-thought about civility.
Sometimes I think the whole question of civility and incivility (online or offline) boils down to the question of am I welcome in this space?
#scio10 preparation: Profiles in civility (or, do we agree on whether particular interactions are respectful?)
Coming up with a good definition is hard. And it’s not obvious that people are even really talking about the same thing when they identify an action or a situation as displaying civility or incivility.
So I’m wondering what kind of insight we can get by looking at some particular situations and deciding which side of the line it feels like they belong on.
Before I put the situations on the table, let me be transparent about how I’m making my calls: I’m going to be asking myself whether it feels like the people involved are showing each other respect, and I’m going to make a special effort to imagine myself on the receiving end of the action or behavior in question. (I’m also going to keep my calls to myself until other people have had a chance to weigh in. And I’m purposely choosing situations where it’s not totally clear to me what I think about the level of respect that’s coming across — so my judgments here are nothing like an official solution set!)
#scio10 preparation: What people might have in mind when they say they want online civility.
In preparation for our session at ScienceOnline2010, Dr. Isis asks:
I talked to my two lovely, delightful, and beloved comoderators last night, I couldn’t help but think that we were approaching this from different experiences and, potentially, with different goals. That made it hard for me to figure out what having me there might add to our discussion, other than to cross the line in some way. I realized that some of my discomfort might come from the fact that I’m not sure that we are all defining “civil” in the same way. …
[T]o get the discussion going here and help me in crafting my portion of the session, let me ask you to provide an answer,
What is the definition of “civility”?
And believe me when I say, I will disemvowel the first one of you to quote me the dictionary definition. How’s that for civil?
I’m not going to even try to give necessary and sufficient conditions for X to be civil. I’m still working out what I think. But I’m going to see if I can move this along just a little.
When, partway through a conversation, one participant says to another, “I don’t think you’re being very civil,” what’s happening?
#scio10 preparation: Things I like about having conversations online.
In the comments on my last post, a number of people made the suggestion that something about the nature of online interactions may encourage people to say things they would never say to someone’s face, or to be more impulsive in their responses, or surf on waves of free-floating anger, or what have you.
While this may sometimes be the case — for some people, in some circumstances — my initial reaction is that there are a lot of features of online conversations (on blogs or the comment threads following them, in online fora, etc.) that I find can make for better conversations than many that happen face to face.
#scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?
Two weeks from today, at ScienceOnline ’10, Dr. Isis, Sheril Kirshenbaum, and I will be leading a session called “Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents”. In preparation for this, the three of us had a Skype conference last night, during which it became clear to us that there are many, many interesting issues that we could take on in this session (and that we come to the subject of online civility from three quite different perspectives).
To try to get a feel for what issues other people (besides the three of us) might want to discuss in this session (or on blogs, of whatever), I’d like to bounce some questions off of the best commenters in the blogosphere (that’s you!). And where I want to start is thinking about what assumptions might be implicit is our session title:
– Is there some special problem of online civility (vs. offline civility)?
Search term hilarity.
I have a couple of substantive posts percolating, but I need to scrape some ice first. (Plus, you know, attend to some grading and administrative tasks.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share a sampling of some of the search queries that have brought people to this blog:
Continuing internet education.
Yo dawg! This is a soccer tournament weekend for the Free-Rides. (First game: 8:00 AM. Time of departure from Casa Free-Ride: 6:30 AM. Zombification complete!)
At the moment, the younger offspring and I are chilling before the younger offspring’s team’s second game; the younger offspring is watching Fred videos, while I am filling in gaps in my knowledge with the help of Know Your Meme.
Know Your Meme is a good way to catch up on memes that are currently part of the collective memory of the internets, but which might have peaked before some of us Luddites were sufficiently plugged in to be paying attention. And the videos explaining them do a nice job placing the memes in a larger cultural context and providing some analysis of why they caught on.
Here’s an episode that had me and my better half giggling last night:
Be sure to stay near the pause button — some of the images go by quickly, and you’re going to want to be able to read the captions. (The last one is our favorite.)