Thanks and

praise: VLC

Monopsony

In economics, a monopsony (from Ancient Greek μόνος (monos) "single" + ὀψωνία (opsōnia) "purchase") is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only purchaser of a good or service, the "monopsonist" may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony

The Internet as Playground and Factory - Ulises Ali Mejias from Voices from The Internet as Play on Vimeo.

Social Media Course

The past few weeks i've been guiding 9 locals in my neighborhood on a Webdesign with Wordpress course, but they're pretty savvy and inquisitive and I can't get through the course without alluding to RSS, my own Twitter obsession, open source software, embedding media, and getting them somehow intertwined with my own social network(s). This is great but it can get pretty confusing for some, and a bit off the topic of just creating a simple site using Wordpress ... so, i've been thinking about developing a new course for next semesters offerings along the line of "Social Media for ..." something. I haven't figured the right label yet, but it would a fast paced workshop on how to develop your social media network, how to manage and cultivate such a network, and why you might want to do such a thing (personal, marketing, professional networking, etc.)

So it was timely to see gnuchris (a member of a network I sometime inhabit) tweet a reminder of his Planet Talo river of news feed ... where I saw this post by Steven Parker about developing a master course around some networked principles originally articulated by George Siemens:

1. Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence

My experience in the community education centre's Wordpress course really resonated with this idea by George, that

"For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network"

As I work on ideas for this course over the next few weeks I think i'll organize them around these principles rather than any really specific technologies or tools.

(Image Credits: Patch, by VirtualErn. CC-By)

aaahhh...

I feel as if I may be back, for real. I have a new job here: http://www.creative.auckland.ac.nz its kind of full-circle for me as I started out at the University of Auckland when moving back to NZ 7 years ago, got a bit waylayed at AUT, but am back at where I really wanted to be the whole time. I'm not leaving this time ... so you're stuck with me. I'll try to play nice.