GS197 Freshman Seminar: 5th Week

(http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/GS197/week5.html)

Class Page: http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/projects/GS197.html

Today's topic: Virtual Communities: Resource Page (under construction)

• Howard Rheingold defines virtual communities as: "social aggregations that emerge from the [Internet] when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace". (Rheingold, 1993, p. 5)

  He also speaks of virtual communities as "a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks." (Rheingold, 1992, p 1).

  The community thus consists of a number of people with regular contact with each other. It is not necessary that these individuals meet face-to-face but the members are related by shared interests, problems or ideas. Some virtual communities have their origin in existing organisations. In these cases the community form a complement to the regular business. The members have not decided on their membership; an employment in the company involve a membership in the virtual community. [Maria Valtersson, Umea (Sweden)]

• Activities: Find a partner and raise
  1. this week's page on your computer in Netscape or Explorer (Find the URL at the top of this page)
  2. Open yours and your partner's Dante public_html directory.
  3. Go into your "home page" (pico index.html)
  4. Replace "forthcoming content" with "My Mini Research Project" [Look up the coding for this tag in "View"/"Source"]
  5. Close the index.html file (ctrl x, Yes, Enter)
  6. Open a new file: pico mini.html Start with HTML and end with /HTML: then write in: H2 (in pointed brackets, of course) MY MINI-RESEARCH TOPIC: .......... /h2
     Can you add a sentence about your plans and/or what you may have accomplished already: The other members of this "seminar" are eager to find out!
  7. Close the mini.html file (ctrl x, Yes, Enter)
  8. If you have not done so yet, be sure to catch up with weeks 2, 3 & 4 here or at home.
  9. Be sure that you get out of your Dante account before you leave the room. See you next week or better: Let's hear from you before then!

Thanks and Have Fun! GK