»SI Digital Divide Project Discussion«

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test cleared the room 3 hours ago

Tom joined the chat 72 minutes ago

Maggie joined the chat 71 minutes ago

Tom: hi maggie

Maggie: hey tom

Tom: i'm still at work! aaaaah

Maggie: oh no!

Maggie: what do you do again?

Tom: advertising operations

Maggie: in new york?

Tom: yep

Tom: where are you again?

Maggie: i live in brooklyn but right now i'm in new jersey

Tom: i also live in brooklyn

Maggie: i realize now that i never specified 830 pm EST, i'm hoping that was obvious to everyone else

Maggie: i think jeanine is in austin

Maggie: oh, where?

Maggie: i live in crown heights

Tom: i live in clinton hill / bed stuy - near pratt university

Maggie: off the g?

suzanne joined the chat 67 minutes ago

Tom: exactly. at classon

Rebecca joined the chat 66 minutes ago

Tom: so are we all here?

suzanne: hello everyone

Tom: hihi

Maggie: hey all!

Maggie: we're still short one person

Rebecca: hi everyone!

Maggie: amanda, we're missing amanda

Tom: maybe one of us can shoot her an email

Maggie: she's actually the one who requested 830 instead of 8 because she gets home from work late, so she may just be running a few minutes behind

Rebecca: Are you okay chatting at work Tom?

Tom: oh yeah, totally.

suzanne: oh that's right, we can wait another few mins. actually i think when you log in, it shows the previous convo..so she won't miss anything if she's running really late

Maggie: great

Rebecca: We can also save the conversation once it's over so we all have a transcript

Maggie: also very useful

Tom: perfect

Maggie: while we're waiting, does everyone have access to the wiki now?

Maggie: i was in the wedding this weekend so i was actually fielding emails from the rehearsal, etc, and i kind of lost track of who had and hadn't requested access!

Tom: i just requested access. i've been so late on everything this week!

Maggie: okay, i just approved you

Tom: i feel so accepted.

Rebecca: thanks again for taking the lead, maggie

Tom: maggie, is there a password i need here?

suzanne: yes! much appreciated, maggie

Maggie: oh no prob

Maggie: a password for pbworks?

Rebecca: you may need to create a pbworks user account

Rebecca: with the email address you requested access with

Tom: nm i'm in

Tom: thanks

Maggie: yes, as long as you have a pbworks account, you'll find the socinfogroup2 wiki under your workspaces

Maggie: everyone has administrator privileges

Maggie: okay, maybe we should get started without amanda? i'll email her to let her know we're here

Maggie: i forwarded the invite to her gmail because she specified that she checks that more often on the ecollege board

Tom: i think that's ok

Amanda joined the chat 54 minutes ago

Rebecca: sure, let's get started

Maggie: heyo!

Tom: heyo!

Rebecca: hi amanda

Amanda: Hey sorry I just got in!

Maggie: no problem, we figured you were running late!

Maggie: we haven't really discussed anything yet

Maggie: although i notice that you aren't on the pbworks workspace yet

Amanda: Ok cool. Be right back on a computer and not my phone haha

Maggie: no prob, i just sent you an invite to the wiki too

amanda joined the chat 51 minutes ago

Tom:

Tom: sweet

amanda: alright awesome hey again

Maggie: hey

Maggie: alright, let's get started!

Tom: i assume we're going to use rebecca's agenda?

Maggie: i'd like to!

Tom: looks good to me

suzanne: me too!

Maggie: we already have a project management tool (wiki) and a mode of communication for group meetings (chatzy), so we should cover weekly goals/timeline and individual roles/responsiblities

Maggie: as well as setting expectations for response times? (that's part of what dr. pavlovsky suggested)

Maggie: and, of course, talk about the direction of our project re: content and any ideas for the presentation

Tom: right. that's my first question. what are we doing?

Maggie: i like the idea of a website with embedded video/screencast presentation on the main page and then write ups of different issues and links to other resources on sub pages

Tom: i understand we've been assigned the digital divide

amanda: that sounds good to me too.

Rebecca: @maggie - i like that idea as well; if possible i'd like to steer clear of google sites and use something like wordpress if we want to go with templates rather than building our own site from scratch.

suzanne: i like the idea of a website too, with different links. especially because digital divide is such a broad topic that could go in many different directions, we could have subtopics

Tom: can't we submit the pbworks wiki as our report platform?

amanda: i second wordpress, it might be the easiest to put together cleanly

Maggie: we can, but then we will have to gear it toward the class instead of using it as a management tool for keeping each other updated on our individual work toward the final project

Maggie: which is totally up for discussion

Maggie: i like the idea of wordpress also, though, for the record. i've never actually used google sites.

Tom: i'm open to using pbworks for both

Tom: unless, say, we use a google doc as a management tool?

Maggie: we could do that too

Maggie: maybe it would help if we talked about individual roles first

suzanne: either way, we'll have to make 2 sites, one for managing, one for presentation . i guess whichever is easiest to transfer

Maggie: well, we have three people interested in wordpress for the final project, if rebecca and amanda still want to use it

Tom: maggie, that sounds good.

amanda: google docs might be easier for managing? im not sure, i've never used pbworks before, im not sure how to use it

Maggie: we could also use the wiki

Rebecca: yes, i agree with suzanne. we could decide which platform to use at a later point once we start getting some content; consensus seems either way though we'd like a website (of some sort) with a page for each sub-topic.

Maggie: that's totally fine

Tom: so we're tending towards choosing a platform to manage our work right now, yeah?

Tom: we'll talk final presentation later? so what are we managing discussion with? i'm for pbworks

Rebecca: i agree with tom about pbworks for project management ; google docs is a bit difficult to organize coherently since it's all on one page

Maggie: amanda, i can talk you through pbworks and send you a common craft video on using wikis after this, if that helps?

suzanne: i agree, i think we should stick with the pbworks wiki, especially since we already have it set up

amanda: that'd be awesome, i'd appreciate it!

Maggie: i also like pbworks for the same reason, many pages instead of a single document

Maggie: okay great

Tom: what's next, maggie?

Maggie: based on what comes out of this discussion, i'll set up subpages for different aspects of the project right after we're done chatting

Maggie: okay, well, we can talk about individual roles (and in this, division of subject coverage, i hope) or weekly schedule/goals

Tom: i don't mind writing.

Maggie: think it would be easier to talk about the former before the latter, so we have a better idea of what we want to accomplish before we set a schedule

Tom: if anyone feels like they don't want to write a whole lot, i prefer it

Tom: and i'm pretty good at cleaning up a mess of ideas that are floated about.

Tom: just to speak to a particular strength

Maggie: that is a useful skill to have in a group project

Maggie: have you looked at any of the literature on the digital divide yet, tom? i think we should also talk about any particular issues relating to the topic that we may individually want to gather material about

Tom: i have not

Tom: i felt like sandbagging on that point. thought maybe i'd get some inspiration from others speaking to their interests

amanda: i haven't looked at any academic stuff but i would like to look at mobile web and how that affects the divide

Maggie: so, yes, maybe everyone could give some indication if there is some aspect of the final project they might want to work on (screencast/video, write-up of an issue, amassing links/articles, etc.) and also, if there is any particular topic they want to cover

Maggie: great, amanda!

amanda: i've done just like a google search and a wikipedia browse over but i'm really interested in it

Tom: that sounds awesome, amanda

Maggie: danah boyd was talking about how urban teens/teens of color were the first to utilize the mobile web but that developers only started to care about optimizing the web for mobile devices after middle-class white adults started buying smartphones in one of the readings dr. pavlovsky linked to on the digital divide tab on ecollege (also here: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF200...

Rebecca: i'm interested in the concept of community informatics - the practice of researching and developing ICT solutions for "the public good" that actually take digital divide issues into consideration before implementation

Maggie: also good

amanda: oh awesome maggie, i have yet to read that but i definitely will

amanda: do a lot of companies do that rebecca? most companies i work with forget...haha

Maggie: i think i might be most interested in the "global digital divide," like the imbalance of access and use on the level of countries/how governments control information flow

Tom: ok, so it sounds like we have three solid sub-topics here

Rebecca: i think that's a really great one maggie - did you watch the TED talk that Lilia had posted?

Tom: 1. Maggie's proposal - the demographics of the digital divide (by race & age, for example)

Tom: 2. Rebecca's community informatics

Tom: and 3. the mobile web

Tom: maybe we can parse those out

suzanne: like I mentioned in the group intro, i wrote a little bit about it for the human info behavior class. not sure if we want to use that at all. But I read an article about how too much technology actually is negative for groups in extreme poverty. might be too against it though..i'm also interested in language barriers. not sure if that overlaps maggie's global idea

Maggie: tom, the global digital divide issue is ususally framed on the level of developed vs. developing countries than other social demographics

Maggie: however, we might want to talk about the demographics of the digital divide in the united states as another subtopic

Maggie: because there is a lot written about that

Tom: i think that's a good point

amanda: yeah, the us on its own has a ton of into

amanda: info*

Rebecca: suzanne, ii think your HIB paper would be great. we could do a sub-topic on the information poor - homeless individuals, battered women, immigrant/refugees. i think also that the community informatics piece could also just be broadened to just how to address the digital divide -perhaps its own page, separate from the sub-topics.

Maggie: my hib group project was about information poverty

Maggie: and just to go back to demographics in the us, this is a good article for some background reading tom: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content...

amanda: ooh i like that idea too.

Tom: i personally think information poverty raises enough sub-topics in its own right to constitute a project

Maggie: (you can access it through the rutgers library if you log in)

Tom: thanks

suzanne: yeah i wasn't sure if there was too much overlap, or if getting into info poverty was too much, but we can keep those topics in mind

Rebecca: i agree tom, but we could use jsut one of those groups as potentially representative of some of the types of issues. i think demographics is important, but even in that there's age, race, location (urban - rural), economic status, gender, etc. i think we could think of large subtopics and identify one or two specific examples to represent, being sure to acknolwedge that we're only getting the tip of the iceberg

suzanne: i just wasn't sure what topic to focus on for the digital divide, sorry to be all over the place

Maggie: lol, i think we're all kind of all over the place right now suzanne

Maggie: it's hard with a group this big

Rebecca: i'm definitely having trouble narrowing too

Tom: this will be messy at first

Maggie: well, would we all be able to set another meeting later this week

Tom: it's alright. i can tell you that i would rather have a unified topic that focuses on two or three particularities of a broad topic than the alternative: a couple of broad topics

Maggie: commit to delving into the literature and coming back with a firm focus on what we would want to cover in a general intro to the digital divide and then a subtopic each of us would want to be responsible for?

amanda: i can do any night other than friday or saturday

amanda: i work those nights

Maggie: (it keeps erasing the first few words of my sentences!)

Tom: yeah, maggie. that's a point. we don't have to decide now

Rebecca: i could do wednesday after 6pm; thursday after 8pm and may be able to do sunday evening as well

suzanne: i like the topics everyone suggested so far. we could find a way to split them up, see what we each find and report back?

Tom: YES

amanda: agreed

Maggie: that sounds good to me

Tom: i can never do before 7pm on weekdays

Maggie: the way i am going to split up the wiki right now

Maggie: is by group member

Maggie: and on your page, you can list resources that you find relating to the digital divide in general and the subtopic you're interested in

Maggie: as well as any ideas you have about the presentation of the information

Tom: sounds great to me

amanda: sounds good

Maggie: so we can keep tabs on everyone else's progress for the time being and share resources with each other

Maggie: does that sound good?

Rebecca: yes, thanks maggie

amanda: yes!

Tom: yep

suzanne: yes, good plan!

Maggie: can reorganize the wiki later to better reflect the organziation of the project

Maggie: good good

Maggie: okay, so, let's just restate what each of us will be researching (in addition to general info about the digital divide, which all of us should do)

Maggie: since it sort of got jumbled above

Tom: let's go alphabetically haha

Maggie: and then also, when you can meet later this week or weekend

Maggie: if you find something else you're more interested in or a better way to frame the discussion as you research, we can reorg in the next meeting

Maggie: so don't worry about that

Maggie: you're not married to what you choose here

Maggie: @amanda: here is the video about wikis from common craft - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

amanda: i'm going to do mobile device divide and i can meet (since tomorrow or wed is probably too soon) thursday night at any time, friday and saturday i work until 11

amanda: thanks for the link!

suzanne: thursday night works for me as well

Maggie: okay, i'm researching the global digital divide, and thursday night is actually the only time i can't meet.

Maggie: well, actually, maybe i could

Maggie: i'm babysitting for a friend; it's a matter of whether the babies stay asleep

amanda: if we can do like, 10am saturday i can do it

amanda: maybe 11

Maggie: i could do that too, or if we said 8:15 pm on thursday, i can probably swing it

Rebecca: i'm going to research approaches/strategies/pr​actices of addressing digital divides (i.e., community informatics - at least as I understand it currently). Unfortunately I can't do Sat morning, but can do Thursday night and Sunday night

amanda: that works, thursday is my only day off this week haha

amanda: sunday the latest i could possibly work is 9, i dont have my schedule yet

Maggie: okay, as long as tom can do thursday night

Maggie: then let's do it then

Tom: yeah, i'll do whatever as long as it's after 7

Tom: i'll come up with a topic by then... and it'll probably be something historical

Maggie: sounds good

Maggie: 815 pm is okay for thurs?

Tom: great

Tom: on this thing again?

suzanne: i'm thinking i might focus on a specific aspect, like language or age...but i'll see what i can find

Maggie: and suzanne, do you want to specify a research focus right now? you can always expound more on your wiki page

Maggie: okay great

Maggie: i think this worked pretty well and would like to use it for the next meeting

Maggie: if that works for everyone else?

Tom: sure

suzanne: yep

Rebecca: good by me

amanda: yeah!!

Maggie: okay great

Maggie: i'm going to edit the wiki right now

amanda: i actually have to go, i have something in the oven but i will see you on thursday?

Maggie: please feel free to reorganize your page as i'm going to give it a basic template

Maggie: see you thursday!

Tom: likewise. bye!

Maggie: bye!

suzanne: see everyone thursday

Rebecca: thanks maggie! see everyone on thursday

Rebecca: i'll save the convo for us and put it up on the wiki too

suzanne: good idea, thanks!