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Discovering MSN communities: World Teachers

Back in 1999, I was translating texts about a virtual learning platform that was being constructed for vocational schools in Ticino (CH). Screenshots of its present form - it didn't change much since - in Project Virtual Learning Platform.

I was warily beginning to accept that the online world was not just the lot of waffle it seemed from listening to enthusing catechists, but could actually be used to do things. I was also teaching at a few middle schools. So I wanted a learning platform too, but middle school teachers were not allowed to use that one.

Then one day, I noticed there was a "Chat and People" link in my hotmail account. I knew kids were indulging in this strange thing called "chat" but had never done it. So I clicked. The chat didn't work from the school computer I was using, but from there I got to the MSN communities (now groups). The top one in the Education category was World Teachers, so I joined that.

I was bowled over: it was a learning platform with everything I wanted: you could store files and pics, there were message boards, a calendar, links lists and other lists. Wow. Back then, I thought the World Teacher manager, Cemal Ardil, had built the whole thing from scratch wit 0s and 1s. It took me quite a while to understand that there were kind of lego blocks you could put together to make such a community.

So long, MSN

Pun intended: MSN will close groups on Feb. 21, hence "so long" meaning "good bye". AndI started using MSN groups - back then, communities - ca 9 years ago, and that's a very long time on the web.

In the following posts, I'll try to recap what this MSN experience has meant for me - and maybe for others too.

Of Scripts and Stats and Mice and Men

Of Scripts

Anna Veronese, Luca Mascaro and I write in turn a short column called "Navigare meglio" for a local consumers' bimonthly review called "Spendere Meglio" www.spenderemeglio.ch. While normally the articles of the review are only available online to subscribers, the agreement is that we make our column available to all in a version with links in our blog, noimedia.iobloggo.com. I do that by copying first the "for-print" text from the simple-text email sent to the review.

And so I did yesterday too: copy-pasted, removed the extra line-breaks, added the links and saved. But the post came halved. And when I looked at the Navigare Meglio category, it was weirder: the post was half my last article, half Luca's June article, with the August one gone to the dogs, apparently. Took a screenshot of the garbled post, re-opened it: everything seemed fine in WYSIWYG. Opened the source view and there it was, a javascript. Saved a copy of the source, took a screenshot of the script, removed it, resaved and everything was fine: See "Video On Demand": solo domande? - Navigare Meglio, ottobre 2007.

But how on earth had I added that chaos-making javascript if I haven't a clue how to start to write one? I asked Roberto Ellero in chat a while after. Roberto is a code purist verging on the puritan: he does grant the bloggers of his Webmultimediale.org project a WYSIWYG, but I think he hasn't touched one in decades

When he suggested there was perhaps something wrong with the text formatting in the e-mail, I said "No, I always send plain-text - erh wait, I always send plain text e-mails, but I copied that one from web e-mail, from gmail, highlighting manually first. Could that be the reason?" "Of course!" he said "Gmail is full of ajax scripts". I felt a bit as if I had been having unprotected intercourse after a boozy party, but it was better to have a rational explanation, if ever at all.

Of Stats

On Oct. 2, 2007, I looked at the download stats for our podcast, noimedia.podspot.de. For the whole lot from the first one, a year ago.

Some interesting patterns emerged: the most downloaded ones were the interviews with Luca Mascaro, and among these the ones for which I had also given a transcript on the noimedia.wikispaces.com wiki had been downloaded more often than the others. With one exception: Luca Mascaro: DRM e tecnologie assistive, where the 3 text versions - Italian transcript, English and German translations - apparently had stifled downloads instead of enhancing them .

This seemed confirmed by the fact that among the other podcasts, the ones in English - hence transcribed and translated in the wiki - fared better than the ones in Italian, untranscribed.

And among the untranscribed ones in Italian, the ones with non academics fared better than the ones with academics.

I happened to have a transcript on my computer of the last "Italian with academics" podcast, A dieci anni del lancio del Progetto Poschiavowhich I had done to experiment transcribing in the labels of Audacity (see Trascrivere l'audio nelle etichette di audacity. So I posted it in in noimedia.wikispaces.com/movingAlps+2004+RSI, linked to it in the podcast's description, to see if it would boost the downloads, and sent Luca the above considerations, together with the full download stats.

The next day, he wrote that the hypothesis made sense, and to please let him know about the results of the addition of the transcript for the last podcast.

... of Mice and Men...

So in the evening I checked the stats again: they had all been zeroed by a server glitch :D

Geo TV -Meray Mutabiq - 3rd June 2007

Dr. Shahid Masood's program "Meray Mutabiq" aired on sunday 3rd June in which Kabir Ali Wasti spoke against Musharraf. This triggered blockage of GEO News in various parts of Pakistan.

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