Susan Nemitz: On the front lines of the digital divide ... - Twi. By Susan Nemitz Posted: 02/18/2010 12:01:00 AM CST At 3 p.m. on a weekday in the Maplewood Library, teens begin to sweep through the building to access the public computers.
When asked why they choose to use the library, they cite required group projects, the need to access specific software programs like PowerPoint, the competition among three siblings fighting over access to the sole computer at home, the dial-up modem access that fails to provide adequate bandwidth, and their desire to work in a safe and quiet after-school space. Every day, librarians are called upon to support job-seekers who have no computer access, lack rudimentary computing skills, have little knowledge of how to conduct an online job search, and have had no experience submitting an online application.
Most workforce programs are available from 8 am to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Meantime, the surge in the number of seniors who depend on public-library computers represents a fascinating trend. City Brights: Howard Rheingold : Twitter Literacy (I refuse to m. Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle.
It’s not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We’re beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn’t have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now.
One of my students asked me online why I use Twitter. Immediacy – it is a rolling present. A way to meet new people – it happens every day. A Twitter Decision. In starting a significant project, an engineer knows the first three big design decisions you make are vastly more important than the second three.
The nature of these decisions varies from project to project. They may be choices about look and feel, rules about architecture, or trade offs regarding feature set. Whatever these decisions are, they set a tone that defines the success of the project. When I look at Twitter, I see three early essential decisions about how Twitter allows you to craft a community. I believe much of Twitter’s continued success is due to definition and execution of these decisions. Interestingly, some obvious candidates for the Top 3, like “Scales like crazy”, “Will generate money”, and “Needs to be searchable” weren’t initially there.
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