I have not limited myself to one post per day because it's never really been a problem for me, as it is for others. The developer community at facebook recently brought back the interactive friend thing (or sociogram) of your own social network on facebook. This is huge. There is a big problem because it is so slow to use, but the interactivity is great and the analysis that you can do with it is great. The way our sociogram website is set up does not involve interactivity, but only provides a snapshot and some analysis of your social network in the classroom. But you can download the file and open it on your own computer with no problem. I am going to have to re-evaluate everything we are doing and find out if there is a way to include http://www.touchgraph.com into our site now. Schools need this and students will understand it better than teachers. Right now our site is designed to help teachers and parents, but ultimately I think that this information will be much more powerful in the hands of the students.

Just a side note. Not only does http://www.touchgraph.com provide the background software for this, but they have something amazing that I have never thought of. It's a network map of websites. Who links to who? Who do those that you link to or that link to you link to? (If that makes sense). This could be great for our network map of books starting with love is the killer app.

Labels: facebook, network mapping, sociogram

Well, it hasn't been 24 hours and it hit me that yesterday that I had decided to create a network map of books thinking that as I casually read I could take a few notes and have the information for the map. My reading is going to have to be a lot more intense. I'm going to have to create a new line for every time that a book is mentioned and label each line with a page reference and topic. I realized this as I continued reading Sanders' book and hit more Tipping Point references. There should be some indication that The Tipping Point was referenced more than others and I think multiple lines will do that. Yed will take into consideration the number of lines when it places the nodes. I'm going to create a Google spreadsheet to keep track of all of the information so that we can use it later to organize the references however we want. Anyone that wishes to become a collaborator on this one, just let me know. Also, if I'm going to keep reading at the gym, I'm going to have to get one of those bookmark pens. They're extremely small and just barely thicker than a large needle.

Labels: books, network mapping

I am in the middle of reading "Love is the Killer App" by Tim Sanders and as constantly recommended by Paul Allen. It didn't take long before I realized that I was going to have to make a list of the books that Tim talked about because it was more than a few. I then listed to a discussion by Malcom Gladwell and another by Steven Levitt in which they both referenced other authors. It seems like they are all familiar with each other and are constantly quoting one another and referencing ideas brought up in each other's books. I'm going to make a network map of books. I'll start with the one that I'm reading and as I go through it, I will make a list of those connected to it. As I go through those and other books, I'll do the same. I don't know if there will ever be an end to it, but maybe there is. Maybe there is a ring of books that reference each other. Of course there will always be other books that reference that ring, but unless it's connected by someone else referencing it, it most likely will not make it into our network map. I can already tell you that my own book list will make it just because I'm going to read them anyways and most of those on Paul Allen's list will make it because I respect his opinion on books. One that might be a node completely unattached, for example, is "Mindless Eating." I'm excited to read it, but I haven't seen it linked to by any other books. Well, the image involved will most likely be constantly changing, but I will try and make sure that I always update it. I'll also provide the ygf file for anyone that uses Yworks or Yed (which I recommend for any lightweight network mapping). I imagine that with this info we'll also be able to make a network map of the authors and then maybe the topics and which topics are linked to other authors, etc. Anyone can feel free to include their own networking and I'll add it to this. Also let me know if I make a mistake. You'll notice the different colors. These will probably change but right now the darker yellow is the book that I'm mapping or have mapped. The pastel green are those listed as a must read by the author and the pastel yellow are all others mentioned in the book. I'm only on page 76 of Sanders', so there is more to come.

YGF File Download

Labels: books, network mapping