What is our network designed to do?
Our network is design to help students' search on Pcomp web site easier.
Why do so many ITP students buy the Physical Computing Book even though Tom Igoe's web site is more comprehensive? There are varieties of reasons, but the assumption is convenience; the narrative nature of the book allows for the reader to feel comfortable in the story of chapters and the ease of the index.
If you already know a specific word, just google the word + tigoe.net. You will find needed information without any problems. Tom is often updating his web site and offering detailed information with easy-to-understand documents. But if you hardly know/remember the term, tough luck! You land up spending precious time looking though his site for the required information! For your information, there are 829 pages under Tom's "pcomp" folder. Without archives, there are still 109 pages. Additionally, those pages are sorted into "Intro to Physical Computing", "Sensor Workshop", "PhysComp Notes", "Resources", "Code" and so on.
On the other hand, you can find information through the book even if you don't exactly know or remember the word. When you are not sure of the term while knowing it belongs to the general category of sensors, all you do is look up the index. Since there is a section named "sensor", you will find the page by reading through those names. Furthermore, you can gain a whole other angle of inspiration by the pages you flip through to when you are trying to get to what you want. Also if you have no idea of subject matter such as "video tracking" the expansive chapter on it does a great job encouraging you into it vs. the intimidating overwhelming set of "google" links. So here not only do your develop a knowledge on video tracking but delve deeper into "Sensing movement." Though, you will not get any latest information, such as "arduino".
So, our idea is combining those great aspects of web site and book without asking Tom for extra work. By adding tags to Pcomp site by students, we would like to create self-generated index. For first step, we are using del.icio.us to add those tags, but as a future plan we are thinking to have the interface like below.
del.icio.us direc.tor
lineto.com
takashi mizohata
Basic description of our network's characteristics + Network's explanation
Each element of our network is like this;
nodes |
ITP students (Potentially, anybody who are learning physical computing through Tom Igoe's web site) |
protocols |
del.icio.us |
transport |
javascript function call on HTTP |
contents |
Tags for Tom's pcomp site |
address |
Individual or our shared del.icio.us account |
topology |
This network shapes a star-network from the data-oriented viewpoint and a cluster from the social-oriented viewpoint. Nodes are not equal because some are searching information through the tags of del.icio.us and some are still looking for pages by themselves. Information on the web site is linear from Tom to students, yet students can contribute to create our own "index" by tagging his pages. |
application layer |
Sending node (Tom Igoe) sends information by updating his web site, and receiving nodes (ITP students etc.) get needed information through tags |
|
transmission layer |
del.icio.us tag for Pcomp to get needed information |
|
physical layer |
We invited people to add tags together on December 4, Sunday 6:30 to 7:00 in Japanese Room(provided snacks and soda) |
Visual Explanation
Prediction
- Multiple tagging of most interested areas and most used areas of the site
- More loose links to people who have already tagged Physical Computing extensively like Jeff and John and Tom himself.
- We would come out with a more or less organic index structure for this site which we could then pull into a chapter concept.
How it worked actually?
On December 3, we send an email to invite people to add tags together on Sunday 6:30 to 7:00 at Japanese room. About 10 people helped us. Here is the instruction document, which we gave to them.
What to do?: Tag Tom Igoe's Pcomp Site by using del.icio.us; Purpose?: Create user-oriented index and make search easier for students For del.icio.us user / new del.icio.us user:
For non-del.icio.us user:
Tag rules:
|
Also, we send an another email to the list to ask for tagging by themselves.
Thanks to all of you who could help us out tonight - we really appreciate it! So this is what we have for the rest of you who are interested in contributing to the Tagging of Tom's site: LINK to: http://del.icio.us/itpcomp (single "p") login: itpcomp password: itpcomp There are a bunch of links in this delicious account. Please feel free to add a link, add and edit tags in areas of Pcomp that interest you. All users and especially the ones using your own account, please start every one of the links with the TAG "itppcomp" (double "p") Rules....
We are going to present some of this data on Thursday so would really appreciate it if you take a look and contribute within the next 2 days. Thanks a ton for all the help! Makiko and Sonali |
So, our observation is;
- Students were very responsive to understanding that some order needed to be brought to the search of work on the site
- On arranging a physical meeting where people got together and tagged it was key that we provided snacks - the incentive for people to take a break from their projects to come out and work on this.
- Instead of it being a tagging party it was a very quiet room where people started reading through the links that had been posted in detail. Wondering what to tag - how to etc.
- There were quiet a few people who started their own delicious accounts that evening and learned how to tag and use it.
- One of the students was a person going to be doing Pcomp next semester and was really interested in finding out about resources that she could harness in the most efficient manner.
- Seeing the tension on the floor that evening we predicted that when people got the hang of using the software and tagging they would go back to their work and this made the observation last about 30 - 40 min.
- When people were put in a room as asked to tag - if they saw a tag on a link they tended to move on to the next stub. This did not allow for the multiple hits on one link or the multiple tagging of one link. But it did allow for a large ground cover setup by us where we provided all the stubs. So in this scenario the tag counts all hover in the single digits.
Future plan
At this point, we are showing students only the del.icio.us interface. Yet we think this interface could be more user-friendly for our purpose. Here is an idea of our new interface designed by Takashi Mizohata.
Also, the new extension for del.icio.us + FireFox would be interesting as a reference;
At this point, we hardly know if tagging on one specific web site with many students works as a glossary page or not. But through this project, I found that it may have a huge possibility of new way of "index page" for web sites.