Welcome to the TransActions research group at the Education Faculty, University of Oslo. Formed in 2006, we bring together interdisciplinary research expertise across different parts of the faculty. The group has media, learning and identity in formal and informal settings as its core interest.
We're using a wiki to build and mediate a shared research space. Making connections between material in the site is central. We do this by profiling entries in the window to the right. These are gathered from across the site by way of each entry having a label (see header Labels under the logo).
This space contains material drawn from across the Transactions website. Blogs appear on each project page and well as for each of the members. A selection of material from these blogs is served up to the 'Home' screen.
Mimi Ito skrev nylig på bloggen sin: "...while we may know the general demographics and numbers of US teens who have decided to participate in an online site such as MySpace, we know little about why particular youth decide to opt in or out of participation, and what the variables are--personal, social, cultural--that factor into these decisions as part of an unfolding life history" og stiller her et sentralt spørsmål: "Why is it that some youth decide to participate in some online sites rather than others?"
Det er nå lagt ut et refleksjonsnotat fra siste seminar på wiki'en. Dette er lagt ut under noe jeg har kalt 'TransActions' collective remembering', som dere igjen finner under 'Resources'. Ideen er at vi her fortløpende kan legge ut refleksjonsnotater fra seminarene etter hvert som disse finner sted. Dette vil forhåpentligvis fungere som en slags felles hukommelse for gruppen, og kan være en nyttig resurs i arbeidet med å samle de ulike aktørene i gruppen og deres interesseområder. Flott om dere eventuelt kommenterer notatet som er lagt ut; burde andre aspekter ved Lauglo sin presentasjon vært med? Er viktige perspektiver fra plenumsdiskusjonen utelatt? Forslag til aktualiserte spor vi som gruppe kan forfølge? Anyone?
For de som ennå ikke har besøkt denne siden ok ressurs for alle som er interessert i spenningsfeltet mellom det formelle og det uformelle knyttet til læring, identitet, utdanning, politisk deltakelse etc...
Just under the main banner for this site you'll see a main header in orange called 'Labels'. Here a string of key words or Labels appears.
These labels function as tags to the material entered into the site. When a user makes an entry, it's possible to also choose how to label it. This means adding a new label or selecting one/s from the list that appears automatically. These choices appear at the bottom of the screen when you are in edit mode.
Labels from across the site are then gathered and the string of labels above is shown. Clicking on one of labels in the string leads you to all those entries in the site that is tagged with the label.
This help us build semantic links across transactions. Building such links is part of the 'transactional research rhetoric' InterMedia (a partner in the group) has designed and built for the site as well as being one of their research objects under Transactions.
For us this shows how a research group with related but varying interest can build a set of core, shared concepts over time, across projects and via situated use of this wiki based site.
Reading an article by Sacha Barab and his colleagues in Mind Culture & Activity (2004, Vol. 11, No.1) I came a debate about transactions. These researchers refer to Garrison (2001) who notes that Activity Theory treats components as interacting not transacting.
For Barab et al. (2004: 28) 'When one adopts a transactional lens in understanding activity systems, the system is treated as permeating all components with the triangle simply describing a lens through which to examine the overall system in its multiple functions.'
Garrison's points are debated further by Miettinen (2006).
Dina Dalekeer and I have been working with Idunn Sem at InterMedia to take the design of the site up one additional level towards use by our project group. We'll be coming by several of your offices to introduce you further to the functionalities of the site and to motivate you to add in some content of your own. Thanks to Idunn, to Live Roaldset and to Jeremy Toussaint at InterMedia for getting this site together.
We see that a small group of 'super-users' (you know who you are, do you?!) will help us to spread our ease of use with this site. It's using the wiki tool called Confluence. It really isn't that steep a learning curve to get to know Confluence. So, some peer learning here TransActions Group!
The site will be launched (and explained) at our next meeting (Wed 31 October). News such as this appears under events. When you are registered as a user, event feeds will come automatically to your email account. Easy, isn't it?
Designs for learning is a conference focusing on design and knowledge. I hope that many of us have the possibility to go to Stockholm these first days of March 2008. I have submitted a paper and I think both Håvard, Magnus, Ola E. and maybe Andrew will find many of the issues on the conference interesting.
The conference will be organized around presentations of theoretical perspectives, research methodologies and empirical findings. Additionally, workshops will be organized around specific areas of interest.
The deadline for submitting abstracts is 15th November.
During this event we asked one of our Transactions associates, Julian Sefton-Green, to comment about some of the main issues we take up in the project. In this extract Julian talks about:
flash object får sin feed fra
1. calender, confluence
2. main og individuelle blog entries, confluence ("News Items")
3. sider (e.g. publikasjoner, about transaction), confluence ("Pages")
4. commentarer til disse sidene, confluence ("Copmments"
5. attachment til disse sidene som pdf-papere under resources, confluence ("Attachments")
6. milestones, time log
7. feed fra relaterte sites
This site is developed by InterMedia, University of Oslo, for the collaborative research team TransActions. For contact, please mail project leader Ola Erstad or site initiator Andrew Morrison.
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ok ressurs for alle som er interessert i spenningsfeltet mellom det formelle og det uformelle knyttet til læring, identitet, utdanning, politisk deltakelse etc...