Q1CatharineStarbird

Document Q1CatharineStarbird

1. Your Name

Kate Starbird

2. Your field of study?

multi - education, social networking, collaborative technology

3. In which semester of study are you?

3rd Semester ATLAS PhD student

4. Why are you interested in taking this course?

To expand my knowledge of collaborative technologies - both existing theory and emerging research. Also, to inform the early design of my dissertation project - a collaborative educational technology.

5. What courses / work activities / background knowledge do you have which might be relevant to this course?

User interface design course. Recent research into collaborative technologies and educational technologies.

6. Indicate your own digital literacy / fluency:
6.1. Describe your programming experience (languages, projects)

BASIC, Pascal, C++, Perl

6.2. What applications are you familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver,...)?

Photoshop, various 3D graphics design applications

7 Give a brief description of the most important book / article which you have read with respect to the topic of the course.

Bruckman, A., & Resnick, M. (1995). The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community. Convergence, 1:1 94-109. Researching Bruckman's work led me to the theories of "Constructionism" - derived from the work of Papert. Though the technology described in the is outdated, the research into collaborative interaction spaces helped me understand existing theory in this space.

8. What do you hope and expect to learn from this course?

I am hoping to use this course to drive my continued investigation social and collaborative digital systems. Ideally, our class will be creating collaborative research as well as studying it. I expect to benefit from other students' experience in the research space and to share my own findings.