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Digital storytelling

Ditigal Storytelling refers to using a variety of media outlets and tools to create a visual for a real-life story.

A New Technology
Digital storytelling brings word-of-mouth to life by adding images, motion, and sound to an age-old practice. When done properly, a digital story can be a highly effective tool for informing, persuading, or otherwise creating an emotional appeal that inspires others to believe in your message or take some action. It can also be a powerful teaching method for creating a memorable educational experience in the classroom.

Digital story telling is still a relatively new concept amd its definition is relatively broad and has yet to be specifically determined.

Elements of Digital Storytelling
The Center for Digital Story Telling, a leader in the digital storytelling industry, has been offering workshops for digital storytelling for 11 years. The goal of the workshop is to get students to design and produce a 3-5 minute digital story by piecing together still images and music and drawing from their own personal experience. Thenmozhi Soundarajan participated in one of those workshops and designed a story titled Momnotmom in which she told a story about her mother's life and how she beleives it has evolved of the years. This is a good example of a digital story because it applies sound, motion, and imagery to a documentary to create an informative story and garner emotional appeal. Digital Storytelling has several elements for creating an effective story. The University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication's Institute for New Media Students and the Media Center has compiled an extensive list of these elements as follows:

Media
Media refers to the material(s) used to create the story package. The ability to use any type of media is unique to to digital story space. Configuration of the document, type of format, currentness of the delivery, and time/space issues in editing of the content are four issues to consider when looking as media.

Action
Action is present in digital stories in two different ways: content action and user action. Content action can be static like newspaper stories, in which the content never moves. It can also be dynamic, or have motion that is a part of the design. A combination of both of these techniques is often used to create a digital story. An example of this is text linked to a motion graphic.

User action can be also be passive, active, or a combination of the two.

When content and user are static/active, a user's actions will generate additional static content. When content and user are dynamic/passive, the content requires no prompting from the user to initiate motion. Finally, when content and user are dynamic/active, user action leads to additional content action.

Relationship
The relationship between the digital story and the user can be open or closed based on linearity, customization, calcuation, manipulation, or appendage.

Linearity refers to the order in which content can be accessed. When a story is nonlinear it is considered to be open because the user can decide in what order they wish to access the content. Linear content, on the other hand, has a fixed order that is set by the designer and cannot be changed by the user. This is considered closed.

Customization refers to the level at which the user can choose their own preferences. Content is considered open when it is customizable, and considered closed, or standard, when it cannot.

Calculation refers to the ability to tally. A story that is calculable is open and users are allowed to submit information that produces some result. Non-calculable stories are closed and have no such feature.

Manipulation refers to the amount of freedom a user has to play with the content.

Manipulable, or open, content allows the user to arrange the content themselves, while set (closed) content is arranged by the designer.

Appendage refers to the ability of the user to add additional content.

Appendable stories are considered open because they allow users to add content while finite stories are closed because they do not allow such actions.

Permanence
Permance addresses the amount of time content alterations can be viewed. Temporary altheration only last as long as the user is accessing the story, while permanent alteration can be viewed as many times as the user wishes.

Availability
When changes to content are only viewable to the user, that content is considered individual. Some content can be altered and the user can choose a select group of people to view those alterations. Some content changes can be universally viewed by anyone who wishes to see it.

Context
Context is the information that appears as part of story and gives it meaning. Digital story telling allows for unlimited context by linking, or appending, additional information. The technique, purpose, source, and content must be considered when linking stories.

Communication
Communication that has multiple ways of conveying information makes digital storytelling unique from other methods of conveying information. Two-way communication allows the user to interact with the designer or other users, while one-way communication lacks this type of communication. In in a two-way configuration, commuincation can be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many. Types of communication include chats, forums, e-mail, or short message service. Stories can be either live or recorded, moderated or unmoderated, and it can be muli-faceted.

How to produce a good digital story
It is important to design a digital story that is both interesting and memorable to your audience. J.D. Lasica, executive director of Ourmedia and the author of Darknet, has compiled a list of steps for writing a good digital story as follows:

Step 1: Decide on the Story You Want to Tell You probably already have a person or subject in mind. Think small. Focus. Don't get caught up trying to convey all the aspects of someone's life - you're not writing the great American novel, you're creating what will optimally be a three- to five-minute work that recounts a personal tale and reveals a small truth.

For ideas about what form your story should take, consider these options:

 * The story about someone important.
 * The story about an event in your life.
 * Travel stories - stories about a personal journey or passage - can be effective if they result in the narrator being transformed by the experience in some way.
 * Accomplishment stories
 * The story about a place in your life. Our sense of place serves as the focal point of a great many profound stories.
 * The story about what I do.
 * Recovery stories.
 * Love stories. We all want to know how someone proposed, met a spouse, experienced the birth of a first child, or came to terms with a parent. Exploring these kinds of relationships helps affirm our own.
 * Discovery stories. These stories probe how we uncovered a truth or learned how to do something.

Step 2: Gather Your Materials Start collecting memories. The most powerful images are often discovered during a treasure hunt in the family attic. Start gathering old photos, vintage film reels, digital video, flyers, mementos - anything that holds emotional resonance. Don't think you have to go out and visually capture a story with a camcorder or camera. Use what you have! Older "found materials" usually prove to pack more of an emotional wallop than new footage. Step 3: Begin Writing Your Script Next, start jotting down ideas. Discuss your ideas with family and friends. Play out a rough story in your head.

Sketch out a script that you'll soon record with your own voice. Resist the temptation to take the easy way out and create a story with only images and music. People want to hear a personal voice. Don't be self-conscious about how your voice sounds; we all think we sound odd on tape.

Draft a short script. That's where many people get bogged down. Get past the fear of committing words to paper. Some tips:

Step 4: Prep Your Equipment You'll need to purchase or borrow these pieces of equipment:
 * Get personal.
 * Write lousy first drafts. Get the main elements of your story down on paper, then go back and edit later.
 * Write short. You'll be surprised at how much you can convey with a few words and some key images.
 * Read your script aloud as you're fine-tuning it.
 * Use plain speech.
 * Don't hold back. Be real. You need to reach an emotional depth.
 * Look for a narrative arc for your story. All stories - even three-minute gems - have a beginning, middle, and end.
 * Work on the pace. The rhythm and tempo of a story is what sustains an audience's interest.
 * Read your script to a friend when you think you've finished. They may often notice ideas that you failed to mention.

 * A desktop computer or laptop
 * Video software such as Apple iMovie, Adobe Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or another software application designed to tell stories. Free and open-source software (FOSS) for this that is also cross platform includes Avidemux for video editing, Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE) that supports animation using 3-dimensional models, and FFmpeg, which is command line.  The command line option is mentioned, because it is one of the easiest ways of producing content in the WebM free license format preferred by Wikimedia Commons.
 * A (desktop) scanner, if you want to include traditional photos in your story
 * Additionally, if you plan to record interviews, you'll need:

Sometimes you may want to conduct an interview with someone, most likely the subject of your story or her friends or relatives. Or, you may want someone to videotape or interview you. Either way, make sure you practice using your equipment before you sit down for the interview. Begin with some idde conversation. A minute or so after you begin, you may want to stop, rewind, and listen to the recording to make sure everything is working properly.
 * A recording device
 * A handheld microphone for audio interviews
 * Headphones

People like to see faces and hear voices. If you have enough photos of the story subject, snippets of an audio interview with the person can often add an interesting counterpoint to your voice-over narrative. Try to find a quiet location, or one that's appropriate to the subject. If you're recording video, make sure the lighting is bright enough to see the subject, but not so bright that he or she is washed out, as in direct sunlight.

In some cases, people find that talking into an audio recording device makes them self-conscious. Sometimes a friend can assist by interviewing you about the subject or person your story is about. Try using a digital recorder so that no conversion from analog tape to digital is required.

If you're interviewing another person, it's best to wear headphones while recording. Your headphones will tell you exactly what you'll hear in the finished recording. Adjust the microphone position for the optimum sound. The best setup typically involves moving the microphone between the questioner and storyteller. Hold it about seven inches from the speaker's mouth, and use a light touch to avoid the rumbling of mike-handling noise.

Feel free to ask questions spontaneously or to read from a prepared set of questions. Take breaks as needed. Use visual cues like nodding your head. Make sure the storyteller's gaze isn't wandering off into a hundred directions.

Step 5: Create a Storyboard A storyboard is simply a place to plan out a visual story on two levels: 1) Time - what happens in what order? and 2) Interaction - how does the voiceover and music work with the images or video?

Use index cards to layout your storyboard. Lay the visual elements that you plan to use on your desk or kitchen table. Jot down the main words that you'll be reading aloud as the image appears in the story on an index card and place it next to the element.

A good rule of thumb is to use no more than 15 images and no more than two minutes of video. As a general rule, four to six seconds is the ideal time for an image to appear on-screen, though feel free to linger longer on a few key images. A handful of good images makes a more powerful story than a scattershot of random photos that fail to connect to the narration. If you get stalled writing your script, try jotting down thoughts on an index card next to an image and let the cards serve as your script. Just write one true thing, and the rest of the words will flow. Step 6: Digitize Your Media You can begin this process earlier, but be aware that the production work involved in creating a short personal story can take many, many hours. Set aside enough time to do it right.

If you're using old photos, you'll need a flatbed scanner. Scan them and save them to a single folder on your computer. If you're using digital photos, make sure they're in JPEG format.

Keep in mind that your video will be horizontal in form, so crop accordingly. Don't distort vertical photos into horizontal ones, but realize that strong vertical shapes will appear with lots of black on both sides. Don't reduce the size of the image to the size your movie will appear; keep them in aspect ratio. Modern computer programs will automatically do this for you. Step 7: Record a Voice-Over You may decide that the microphone built into your laptop or desktop computer will suffice for recording your narration. If you want a more polished production, the Center for Digital Storytelling recommends devices such as a 4-channel mixer, a condenser microphone (Shure, AKG), an aspiration guard - a light covering over the microphone to prevent letters like p's from popping (optional, and stereo-phono to stereo-mini cable. The Center for Digital Storytelling recommends that you record your voice-over at the same quality level that you record your musical soundtrack: 16-bit, 44 kHz.

Many software programs are available to capture audio from an external sound source like a microphone. On a PC, these include the built-in Sound Recorder software, audio shareware, and several professional-level audio- and video-production software packages. The free, open-source program Audacity can capture sound from either a computer's built-in mike or an external microphone.

Above all, speak slowly in a conversational voice. Don't make it sound like you're reading from a script. Step 8: Add Music Choose music that evokes the rhythm and pace of your story. For many people, this is the easiest part of the process. Most of us have soundtracks running in our heads that reflect the mood of the story we want to convey. The most effective tracks are often instrumental: classical, ambient, folk or jazz, with no vocals.

Consider Copyright If you plan on publishing your work to the Web, you're likely violating copyright laws if you use an entire song as the soundtrack to your video. (See Ourmedia's fair use guidelines.) It's much smarter to use podsafe music (and, no, the fact that you're not making money from your story makes no difference under copyright laws). The same rules apply when appropriating copyrighted snippets of television shows or old movies. Use Google to help you find podsafe video and audio.

Finding a talented friend to play an original work on the piano or by strumming the guitar also solves this problem.

Step 9: Edit Your Story Make sure you have all the elements of your story in your video-editing program. If you haven't done so already, import all images, video, your voice-over, and musical elements.

Next, bring the images or videos down into the timeline to match the layout of your storyboard.

It's time to create an initial rough cut before adding transitions or special effects. The draft version gives you an overview of your project and spotlights areas where images or video are insufficient to carry the story.

Next, add titles to the beginning and end of your story. You may also want to overlay text onto an image or video. Avoid the urge to get too jazzy with typefaces or colors: Use a straightforward typeface that's easy to read.

Now comes the hard part: adding transitions - a simple cross-dissolve generally works best - and altering the length of each visual element to make sure it corresponds properly with the voice-over. Often, storytellers find that the "Ken Burns effect" on a Mac is a good way to add visual interest to an image, panning across and zooming into a photo to highlight an expression or important element.

The music is the last element to add (you may want to mute it until you're ready to tackle the soundtrack, usually by unchecking a small box in the timeline next to the music clip). When you're ready to add music, iMovie's controls easily let you adjust the volume to reduce the music volume during the voiceover. It's generally best to fade the music to a low level but not to drop it out completely for the sake of continuity.

Expect to spend a few hours editing your story to get it just right. Don't overproduce: often the spontaneity and directness of the initial drafts get lost with too much polishing.

Step 10: Share Your Story Almost finished! Now you need to produce your video in its final form. In iMovie, you can burn a DVD by launching iDVD. If you want to publish your story to the Web, choose Export>Expert Settings, click the Share button, and choose Export: Movie to MPEG-4. You can also export your file as an H.264 video for the iPod or as a QuickTime movie. I recommend MPEG-4 at a high bitrate of 500 or 600. Or, you can produce it as an H.264 video (the compression is stunning) and simply switch the format suffix from Apple's quirky .m4v to .mp4. If you want to publish your video on Wikimedia Commons, it will need to be in a free license format, preferably WebM. This can be accomplished by using, e.g., the Free and open-source software (FOSS) FFmpeg. FFmpeg is command line, which makes it impractical for many many edit tasks for many people. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to use to convert from, e.g., mp4 to WebM format.

You can also create an online video with QuickTime Pro (which will run you about $30) by choosing File>Export and follow the same steps as above. If you choose File>Share, QuickTime will compress your video as an email attachment. If you created your digital story in Premiere or another program, follow its instructions to export to the Web.

When you've finished compressing the final file, publish it to your blog or to a destination site such as Ourmedia. If you want to share it with just a few friends or family members, share it with SpinXpress, a private, secure peer-to-peer network. Or learn how to promote your videos to a wider audience by reading TechSoup's article Share Your Nonprofit's Videos with the World.

Digital Storytelling in Advertising
Due to the fragmentation of products and audiences across hundreds of television stations and thousands of magazines, companies are being forced to move away from traditional mass marketing and toward one-to-one marketing to avoid getting lost in the clutter. Therefore, digital storytelling is beginning to find its niche in marketing and advertising. Companies are increasingly using this type of media to engage their consumers in interactive online advertisements to build brand awareness.

Further Research
1. How has digital storytelling impacted the learning environment? 2. How are educators using digital storytelling to enhance learning in the classroom? 3. How do I use programs such as iMovie to create a digital story?

Learn by doing

 * Science Fiction Challenge

Index

 * Tooling

title: Digital storytelling


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Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach inspired by critical theory and other radical philosophies, which attempts to help students question and challenge posited "domination," and to undermine the beliefs and practices that are alleged to dominate. In other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve "critical consciousness."

Critical pedagogic educator Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy as:

"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (Empowering Education, 129)"

In this tradition the teacher works to lead students to question ideologies and practices considered oppressive (including those at school), and encourage "liberatory" collective and individual responses to the actual conditions of their own lives.

The student often begins as a member of the group or process he or she is critically studying (e.g., religion, national identity, cultural norms, or expected roles). After the student begins to view present society as deeply problematic, the next behavior encouraged is sharing this knowledge, paired with an attempt to change the perceived oppression of the society. A good picture of this development from social member to dissident to radical teacher/learner is offered in both Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and bell hooks' book Teaching to Transgress. An earlier propenent of a more active classroom, where students direct the epistemological method as well as the actual object(s) of inquiry is the late Neil Postman. In his Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Postman suggests creating a class where students themselves are entirely in control of the syllabus, class activities, and grading.

Topics Introduced
To help encourage students to change their view from accepting the social norms (viewed by critics as being gullible) into being independently critical (viewed by mainstream society as being cynical) the instructors often introduce challenges to heroic icons and self-edifying history using contradictory reports or external points of view of the same subjects.

Generalized Examples
To encourage students to become critical the instructor might use these tasks to challenge the generally accepted paradigm of the student's society:
 * Prompt the student to investigate a war that his or her society has waged and considered just and critically evaluate if it meets the criteria of a just war.
 * Encourage students to explore issues of power in their own families.
 * To lead students to examine the underlying messages of popular culture and mass media.
 * Require the evaluation of existing controversies in contemporary society, such as the relative merits of U.S. government spending on atomic weapons versus international health programs.
 * Ask whether the metaphoric emperor is, in fact, clothed.

Real-world examples of concepts often introduced to generate critical thinking:
 * A challenge to the reverential mythology around Christopher Columbus and leading students to investigate primary sources by and about the historical figure. One might possibly suggest sources such as the Black Legend, or other sources that cast more disconcerting views on the legacy of his efforts.

Results
A prevalent result of critical pedagogy is that students view certain aspects of their lifestyles, nation, or culture critically for the first time.

As an example, someone who follows this means of learning about the United States culture may develop a view that most people in Western society are sleepwalking through a banal existence of consumption, obedience, and propaganda, and that they need to be awakened.

Call to Action
Most instructors of critical pedagogy encourage students who have reached the cognitive state perceived as "enlightened" to share their knowledge in an attempt to reveal perceived failings of society with the goal of fostering what critical pedagogy regards as positive change. Other critical pedagogues, however, are suspicious of the claims encountered in certain modernist emancipatory discourses. Rather than seeking to 'enlighten' the 'gullible,' these instructors explore concepts of identity, history, desire, etc. with learners, and any subsequent calls to action are made by learners.

History
During South African apartheid, legal racialization implemented by the regime drove members of the radical leftist Teachers' League of South Africa to employ critical pedagogy with a focus on nonracialism in Cape Town schools and prisons. Teachers collaborated loosely to subvert the racist curriculum and encourage critical examination of political and social circumstances in terms of humanist and democratic ideologies. The efforts of such teachers are credited with having bolstered student resistance and activism.

Literature
"Famous" authors of critical pedagogy texts include Paulo Freire, Rich Gibson, Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Howard Zinn, Antonia Darder and others. Famous educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues more famous for their anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern. Much of the work draws on feminism, marxism, Lukacs, Wilhelm Reich, post-colonialism, and the discourse theories of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault. Radical Teacher is a magazine dedicated to critical pedagogy and issues of interest to critical educators. The Rouge Forum is an online organization led by people involved with critical pedagogy.

Movies
A number of motion pictures have been used as case studies or object lessons in critical pedagogy, but this does not necessarily imply that the writers and directors of these films endorse radical left-wing politics, or that the films are necessarily allegorical.

 * In the movie The Matrix, the setting is an artificial construction of oppression that instills complacency in its captives through a form of virtual reality, much like the World Wide Web you are currently immersed in. The movie's initial conflict sees the protagonist Neo coming to grips with this truth by suspending belief of the reality he has accepted as unquestionable.

 * In John Carpenter's "They Live" special sunglasses help the protagonist see the hidden messages that lull the population to sleep and seduce them to obedience. These special sunglasses are regarded by some as a visual metaphor for critical consciousness. But this sort of consciousness is disturbing, and the protagonist has to fight to get someone else to put the glasses on.

 * In the biographical film Stand and Deliver Jaime Escalante challenges urban students to excel at math.

 * Dead Poets Society, a Peter Weir film, is set in a 1950's American prep school. Teacher John Keating encourages students to think freely, challenge social norms and "seize the day."

 * In the movie "Accepted", when faced with cultural and parental pressures to attend college, a group of non-admitted recent high school graduates creates a fictitious college. Obstensibly a teen comedy, accepted is said by some to exemplify Freire's notion of critical pedagogy by showcasing the learning that takes place when students are confronted with the question "What do you want to learn?" while they are exhorted by an iconoclast academic to question various societal assumptions.

Music

 * When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.
 * — Paul Simon, Kodachrome

 * We don't need no education, We don't need no thought-control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom - Teacher, leave those kids alone! All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.
 * — Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall part 2

Interestingly though, all the surviving pupils who took part in the Pink Floyd recording collectively agree they would not now support as radical a position as the sentiments expressed by the composers in this song.

 * The teacher stands in front of the class, but the lesson plan he can't recall. The student's eyes don't perceive the lies bouncing off every fucking wall. His composure is well kept, I guess he fears playing the fool. The complacent students sit and listen to some of that bullshit that he learned in school.
 * — Zack de la Rocha, Rage Against the Machine, Take the Power Back

These are a few examples of musical artists who have explored the world of critical pedagogy. Artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, System of a Down, Propagandhi, The Beatles,dead prez, the coup and Eminem have been viewed as raising critical consciousness and challenging authority through some of their works.

Other media
Critical pedagogy is used throughout Grant Morrison's comic book The Invisibles. It is a major theme and plot device through out the series, particularly in the first few issues and the final series.

Also, the book intended for adolescents, "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, depicts an apparently utopian society that is gradually revealed as dystopic. Jonas, the story's protagonist, becomes the "Receiver of Memory" and undergoes a process that some argue is comparable to the development of critical consciousness. Despite the criticisms of various conservative groups who cite that the ideas in the book are inappropriate for children, the book is still included on the middle school reading lists of many school districts.

Critiques of Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy has its critics. They attack the methodology, the goal, and appearances. Below are some contrary views.
 * Teachers that use this method will often bias the class towards an anti-status quo position instead of allowing students to decide if they agree or disagree with the situation at hand [ref?].
 * This approach to understanding the nature of society is often presented in a very intellectual fashion. When an individual attains the interest to find out the validity of the statements they inherently must consider themselves separate from the rest of society. Critics will describe such a self-image as being elitist in a way which excludes the bulk of society thus preventing progress [ref?].
 * The goal exceeds the desire to instill creativity and exploration by encouraging detrimental disdain for tradition, hierarchy (such as parental control over children), and self-isolation [ref?].
 * Such a high degree of distrust in generally accepted truths will create or perpetuate conspiracy theories [ref?].
 * Critical pedagogists selectively pick icons to interrogate and subvert: for example, Thomas Jefferson but not Martin Luther King [ref?].
 * Many people involved in critical pedagogy have never been involved in serious struggles and have used the field to build themselves and a small publishing cabal rather than a social movement. Paulo Freire, for example, can be criticized for being for revolution wherever he was not, and for reform wherever he was [ref?].
 * Critical pedagogy is, in many instances, a movement in opposition to revolutionary or marxist movements as easily seen in its roots in Catholic base communities of Latin America, created to stave off the potential of class war. Much of critical pedagogy focuses on culture, language, and abstractions about domination rather than criticizing the centrality of class, alienation, and exploitation [ref?].
 * Rather than "liberating" student thought, teachers replace a cultural bias with their own bias [ref?].

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Introduction to Foucault

One of the broader modern views of the importance of power in human activity comes from the work of Michel Foucault, who has said, "Power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere." —Aldrich, Robert and Wotherspoon, Gary (Eds.), 2001

Foucault on Power
Foucault's analysis of power is founded on his concept "technologies of power". Discipline is a complex bundle of power technologies developed during centuries as Foucault demonstrated in Discipline and Punish. For Foucault, power is exercised with intention. Instead of analyzing the difficult problem of who has which intentions, he focused on what is intersubjectively accepted knowledge about how to exercise power. For Foucault, power is actions upon others' actions in order to interfere with them. Foucault does not recur to violence, but says that power presupposes freedom in the sense that power is not enforcement, but ways of making people by themselves behave in other ways than they else would have done. One way of doing this is by threatening with violence. Yet, suggesting how happy people will become by buying an ATV is exercise of power as well, and there is a huge knowledge of techniques for how to (try to) elicit such behavior within marketing.

Foucault's works analyze the link between power and knowledge. He outlines a form of covert power that works through people rather than only on them. Foucault claims belief systems gain momentum (and hence power) as more people come to accept the particular views associated with that belief system as common knowledge (hegemony). Such belief systems define their figures of authority, such as medical doctors or priests in a church. Within such a belief system or discourse, ideas crystallize as to what is right and what is wrong, delineating what is normal and what is deviant. Within a particular belief system certain views, thoughts, or actions become unthinkable. These ideas, being considered undeniable "truths", come to define a particular way of seeing the world, and the particular way of life associated with such "truths" becomes normalized. This subtle form of power lacks rigidity, and other discourses can contest it. Indeed, power itself lacks any concrete form, occurring as a locus of struggle. Resistance, through defiance, defines power and hence becomes possible through power. Without resistance, power is absent, but it would be a mistake, some recent writers insist, to attribute to Foucault an oppositional power-resistance schema as is found in many older, foundationalist theoreticians. This view 'grants' individuality to people and other agencies, even if it is assumed a given agency is part of what power works in or upon. Still, in practice, Foucault often seems to deny individuals this agency, which is contrasted with sovereignty (the old model of power as efficacious and rigid).

"One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society." (History of Sexuality, p.93)

"Domination" is not "that solid and global kind of domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society." (ibid, p.96)

"One should try to locate power at the extreme of its exercise, where it is always less legal in character." (ibid, p.97)

"The analysis [of power] should not attempt to consider power from its internal point of view and...should refrain from posing the labyrinthine and unanswerable question: 'Who then has power and what has he in mind? What is the aim of someone who possesses power?' Instead, it is a case of studying power at the point where its intention, if it has one, is completely invested in its real and effective practices." (ibid, p.97)

"Let us ask...how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviours, etc....we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects." (ibid, p.97)

title: Introduction to Foucault


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Spaceflight

Spaceflights
Instructions
 * Read from Wikipedia, spaceflight then evaluate your comprehension using the quiz below.  If you have questions then please consult your instructor/mentor or  .... link to help and/or conceptual overview of program and procedures goes here ...

quiz

Where next?

 * If you answered less than two correct retreat to level X or color y and practice comprehending the material. Perhaps try reading slower and more carefully to see all the material or reading faster to maintain your interest in the material being read.

 * If you missed more than two questions then it is recommended you complete at another module at this level.

 * If you answered all questions correctly then either continue on this level if interesting modules remain or advance to the next level for more challenging reading and rigorous testing.

title: Self Paced Reading Labs/Spaceflight


text: File:Protege Tutorial before.ogg

title: File:Protege Tutorial before.ogg


text: File:Protege Tutorial after.ogg

title: File:Protege Tutorial after.ogg


text: File:Protege Tutorial Start.png

title: File:Protege Tutorial Start.png


text: File:Protege Tutorial End.png

title: File:Protege Tutorial End.png


text:
Construction/Equipment

Introduction
The activities involved in Construction Projects where the magnitude of the work is on a large scale, Speedy Work and Timely Completion of Work with Quality Control are very vital. In order to achieve this, Mechanization of Work has to be done, where Construction Machinery & Equipment play a pivotal role. The need for Mechanization arises due to the following reasons:
 * Magnitude & Complexity of the Project
 * Projects involving large quantities of material handling.
 * Complexity of Projects using high grade materials
 * High quality standards
 * Importance of keeping the Time Schedules.
 * Optimum use of Material, Manpower and Finance.
 * Shortage of skilled and efficient Manpower.

Proper use of appropriate equipment contributes to Economy, Quality, Safety, Speed and Timely completion of the Project. Construction equipment is an important part of any construction process. It is not always desirable or possible for the Contractor to own each and every type of Construction Equipment required for the Project. Considering the various aspects of the utility of particular Equipment, the Contractor has to economically justify whether to purchase the Equipment or to hire it. The amount invested in the purchase of Equipment should be recovered during the useful period of such Equipment.

Equipment Selection
One of the most important tasks in the pre-construction planning process is equipment selection. There are many variables to consider when selecting equipment. Following factors should be considered at the time of Selecting Construction Equipment:
 * 1) The Equipment should be Standard Equipment if possible.
 * 2) It should give the best service at low cost.
 * 3) Its unit cost of production should be moderate.
 * 4) It should be easily repairable with low shutdown period
 * 5) It should be easily disposed off.
 * 6) It should suit the majority of the requirements of the job.
 * 7) It should be capable of doing more than one function.
 * 8) It should be of moderate size, as they have fewer moving parts and have low working cost.

Considering the above, one can either Purchase or Hire the Equipment. If the Equipment is to be used frequently and for a long duration of time on the Project, it proves to be economical to Purchase the Equipment. On the contrary, if the Equipment is to be used occasionally and for a short duration of time on the Project, it proves to be economical to get it Hired.

Classification of Construction Equipment
The basic operations involved in the construction of any Project are Excavation, Digging of large quantities of earth, Moving them to fairly long distances, Placement, Compacting, Leveling, Dozing, Grading, Hauling, etc. Construction Equipment can be classified as under:

 * 1) Excavating Equipment
 * 2) * Power Shovel
 * 3) * Dragline
 * 4) * Hoe
 * 5) Earthmoving Equipment
 * 6) Hauling Equipment
 * 7) Hoisting Equipment
 * 8) * Tower Cranes
 * 9) * Mobile Cranes
 * 10) * Crawler Mounted Cranes
 * 11) * Builders Hoist
 * 12) * Passenger Hoist
 * 13) Conveying Equipment
 * 14) Dredging Equipment
 * 15) Pumping Equipment
 * 16) Compacting Equipment
 * 17) Pile Driving Equipment
 * 18) Drilling Equipment
 * 19) Equipment used for the Production of Aggregate
 * 20) Equipment used in Hot Mix Batch Plant
 * 21) Equipment used for Concrete Works
 * 22) Material Testing Equipment

Wikipedia

 * Wikipedia: Category: Engineering vehicles

Equipment Manufacturers

 * Caterpillar
 * Komatsu
 * Volvo
 * Hitachi

title: Construction/Equipment


text:
User talk:Mirwin/collegues

 * User:JWSchmidt
 * User:Cormaggio
 * User:Rayc
 * http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:ShakespeareFan00

title: User talk:Mirwin/collegues


text:
Portal:TESOL

Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is a topic in the School:Education and the English Language Division and covers all matters relating to teaching English as a second or foreign language.

Little content here yet -- this is a very white whiteboard because Wikiversity is new. Don't let this slow you down...

Plunge ahead and write pages, including lesson plans and materials, about how you teach English and categorize them with   plus appropriate.

How to participate

 * 1) Create pages in the main namespace (page names without a colon in them are in the "main" namespace, eg Example page name ) and write how you teach
 * 2) *teaching tips, obvious or profound, if it works for you write about it
 * 3) *lesson plans
 * 4) *even methodology and approach if you write that way
 * 5) Categorize your new pages with   plus appropriate.
 * 6) Type   on your user page to keep the Topic:TESOL-nav box handy.
 * 7) Use Teamspeak. audio example - using teamspeak for language learning (active listening).

TEFL and TESL, too
TEFL and TESL are part of Topic:TESOL -- let's not spread ourselves too thin; let's bump elbows and share categories for now.

title: Portal:TESOL


text: Template:TESOL

title: Template:TESOL


text:
Template:Cathelp

To add a page below, add Category:  to the bottom of it.

---

To add above note to a category's explanation text, click that category's edit tab and typing into the category explanation text.

It looks odd as rendered in this Template page but it does look right when rendered in a Category.

title: Template:Cathelp


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Food Processing

Lessons to date in this category. Level Classification and quizzes needed.

 * Manufacturing Cheese
 * Uses of Whey
 * /Making Tomatoe Paste
 * /Flour

title: Self Paced Reading Labs/Food Processing


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Human Spaceflight

Lessons needing work on quizzes and evaluation

 * Self Paced Reading Labs/Spaceflight


text:
User talk:Est~enwikiversity

Hi Est, I noticed you have list yourself at game design. I also am interested in games and simulation. Have you seen any excellent implementation of Conways game of Life lately? I am attempting to get a local education video game going. cisLunarFreighter It looks like a huge project and scares people away; but much of it already exists around the web if we are crafty in our design. If you dropped by to brainstorm some scripts or sound effects or any other piece you are interested in it might thaw some crowds out for me. Anyway, drop me a message if you feel like it. Sincerely Mirwin 11:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

{subst:W}

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Est. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Est~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Est~enwikiversity


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Biology/sharks

Instructions: Read the summary of the article Shark. Then take the quiz below. Evaluate your performance as explained below and proceed to your next selected lesson as per the ...link to index or lists of lists with coding information here.

/quiz

If you missed more than two answers consider selecting a lower level reading lab next time.

If you missed only one consider selecting a same level lab for additional practice.

If you missed none consider whether you wish to practice more at this level or start a more demanding level.

title: Self Paced Reading Labs/Biology/sharks


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Sharks : Quiz

A quiz about sharks

{True or False, Sharks are fish + TRUE - FALSE
 * type=""}

{How many gills do shark generally have to breath or respire? - about twenty + five to seven - two to three
 * type=""}

{True or False, the Whale Shark, RhinCodon typus, is currently the world's largest known fish. + TRUE - FALSE
 * type=""}

{Approximately how large is a pygmy shark? - Human sized + Hand sized - Bus sized
 * type=""}

{Shark attacks on human are common or rare? - Common + Rare
 * type=""}

{True or False, the bull shark is known to swim in both salt and fresh water. + TRUE - FALSE
 * type=""}

title: Self Paced Reading Labs/Sharks : Quiz


text: User talk:HLNolan

title: User talk:HLNolan


text:
Evolutionary psychology

Welcome to the Evolutionary Psychology learning project.

Summary
Evolutionary Psychology is a scientific exploration of the evolution of mind and patterns of behavior. This learning project provides activities for exploration of psychology from the perspective of evolutionary biology.

Learning materials
Wikiversity has adopted the "learning by doing" model for education. Lessons should center on learning activities for Wikiversity participants. Learning materials and learning projects can be used by multiple projects. Cooperate with other departments that use the same learning resource.
 * Do women and men think differently? - Readings and discussion

Learning materials and learning projects are located in the main Wikiversity namespace. Simply make a link to the name of the lesson (lessons are independent pages in the main namespace) and start writing!

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has directed the Wikiversity community away from courses (the Board's comments). Wikiversity participants are encouraged to innovate and create learning experiences that take full advantage of the wiki format of online community interactions. Non-traditional Learning Projects that are oriented towards learning about conventional course subjects are encouraged within Wikiversity. See: Learning and Portal:Education.

Activities

 * Help develop book modules such as How Men Select Women at Wikibooks

Readings

 * Evolutionary psychology - Wikipedia article

Recommended Texts

 * Evolutionary Psychology: the New Science of the Mind (2nd Ed.). Written by David M. Buss.
 * The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. Written by Steven Pinker.
 * The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Written by Jermoe Barkow, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides.

title: Evolutionary psychology


text:
Architecture/Introduction

Architecture is defined as the art and science of designing buildings and structures. A wider definition would include within this scope the design of any built environment, structure or object, from town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to furniture and objects. It could also be defined as the manipulation of shapes, forms, space and light to change our environment. A very famous definition of architecture is the one made by French architect Le Corbuiser: "Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of forms under the light." (Vers une architecture, 1923) In fact, defining architecture is not easy, and one would find as many definitions as there are books about architecture. Probably, each architect has his/her own, preferred definition.

Doing architecture requires strong technical knowledge in the fields of engineering, logistics, geometry, building techniques, functional design and ergonomics. It also requires a certain sensibility to arts and aesthetics. Finally, it also requires a preoccupation for human questions and society's problems. Architecture is a very broad and humanistic field that is at the same time technical, artistic and social. Traditionally, architecture courses are always found at the crossing of those domains. The profession of architect demands a certain ability to synthesize information coming from very different areas, and architects often assume the position of leader, mediator or centralizer in groups made of very different specialists.

Today, however, the broad scope of construction, the demand for a wide array of different structures and the general tendency to specialization, very present in the construction field, have resulted in architecture being often divided in several different specializations.

The aim of this course is to give students a firm basis on the many elements that contribute to architectural design as well as an idea as to what section of the field they may be best suited to.

This introductory module is part of the proposed curriculum for the bold experiment to teach Architecture online, which is unique, and unprecedented. Historically, it is a fact that some of the best architects in the world have been self learners, this School of Architecture proposes a practical guide of the most important steps that have made us Architects. Becoming an architect is a long journey consisting of education, internship, and examinations; and requires the practitioner to be dedicated, creative, detail-oriented, and possess a firm resolve to complete all which you have begun. You will enjoy this experimental process and the amazing experience of becoming an architect.

Architecture
Architecture, the art and science of designing and erecting buildings, is a vast subject -- every culture since the dawn of time has had its own distinct style of making shelters for people to live in, work in, and store things in. These shelters have since evolved to become the house that we know today.

Architects provide care in the shaping of our built environment. A wider definition would include within its scope the design of the total built environment, from the macrolevel of town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to the microlevel of furniture.

The earliest Architects were definitely not specialists, but someone who erects basic dwellings using simple tools and materials found adjacent to the site. Today, architects are licensed by a jurisdiction to provide design services to the public through the practice of architecture and there are many Architecture COMPANIES.

The Art and Science of Architecture
The soul of architecture is to design a structure that will be suited for humans to live in, work in, play in, etc. It is also to give comfort to its users -- to make them feel comfortable, make them feel uplifted, make them feel that someone cared about their well-being enough to design something that they would enjoy. A good Architect does more than just design buildings -- he or she understands how people's surroundings make them feel, and creates an environment that will meet their needs and desires

Objective of This Course
We attempt to design the course in such a manner to make the learning of architecture available and affordable to everyone. A conscious effort is made to ensure the reading materials will be available online as against the need to purchase costly textbooks, reference books and periodicals. As such, it is suggested that you try to go through the reading list at the end of each module or section.

Methodology
You are encouraged to bookmark your local architecture institute websites to keep abreast with the current development of the profession in your home country. We also encourage you to bookmark these links to Royal Institute of British Architects and American Institute of Architects.

title: Architecture/Introduction


text:
Do women and men think differently?

Can differences in behavior between men and women be traced to biological differences in their brains?

Reading

 * male and female mate choice by Andy Lock, et al.
 * Kruger, D.J., Fisher, M., & Jobling, I. Proper and dark heroes as dads and cads: Alternative mating strategies in British Romantic literature (2003) Human Nature, 14, 305-317.
 * Normal Sexual Dimorphism of the Adult Human Brain Assessed by In Vivo Magnetic Resonance Imaging by Jill M. Goldstein, et al.
 * Brain response to putative pheromones in homosexual men by Ivanka Savic, Hans Berglund, and Per Lindström
 * G Helman Ceil, (2007) Culture, Health and Illness, Medical School, London

Discussion

 * Are there real differences between male and female human behaviors or just mythical stereotypes?
 * Are there differences in the structure of male and female brains?
 * Is there so much variation in human brains that differences between brains of average human males and average females are insignificant?
 * How can we determine which behavioral differences between men and women are due to culture and which are due to biology?

title: Do women and men think differently?


text:
User:Tryptamine

Tryptamine

aim - i nuk all night or amerrypranksterr

deoxy irc - tryptamine, believer, merryprankster, blotter

www.people.tribe.net/imfunkedup

title: User:Tryptamine


text:
User talk:Mirwin/links to background reading

 * Power summit for One Laptop Per Child project
 * Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool

Related to holt
 * http://www.alfiekohn.org/articles.htm

 * http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com Ariannah (home schooler) finds this a good site.


text:
User:Sterling/fca

Only relational first order languages are used in the following.

Example: Formulation of requirements for software - here simplified to a single relation (this can refere to a static model in software-engineering, like a data model or a component structure) and requirements language is FO. So one can require the software to have properties like

While collecting the requirements the question arises can we ever stop, i.e. is there a point where the software (i.e. the relation) is uniquely specified? We consider this issue for the general case first, to find that there are cases where FO is not expressive enough to provide a unique description. Later we restric ourselves to finite models where a unique specification (up to isomorphy) is always possible.

Befor we go into the details we introduce some formalisation of uniqueness.

Elementary Equivalence
Definition Elementary Equivalence of Structures

Let $$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{B}$$ be S-Structures. $$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{B}$$ are said to be Elementary Equivalent (short: $$\mathfrak{A} \equiv \mathfrak{B}$$) iff for all S-Sentences φ it is

 * $$\mathfrak{A}\vDash \varphi$$   iff    $$\mathfrak{B}\vDash \varphi$$.

Isomorphy
Definition Isomorphism on Structures and Isomorphic Structures

Let $$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{B}$$ be S-Structures. A mapping $$p: A \to B$$ is said to be an Isomorphism from $$\mathfrak{A}$$ to $$\mathfrak{B}$$ (short: p:$$\mathfrak{A}\cong \mathfrak{B}$$) iff all of the following conditions hold:
 * 1) p is a bijection from $$A$$ to $$B$$
 * 2) for n-ary $$R \in S$$ it is
 * $$R^\mathfrak{A} a_1, ..., a_n \iff R^\mathfrak{B} p(a_1), ..., p(a_n)$$
 * 1) for n-ary $$f \in S$$ it is
 * $$p( f^\mathfrak{A} (a_1, ..., a_n) ) = a \iff f^\mathfrak{B} (p(a_1), ..., p(a_n)) = p(a)$$
 * 1) for $$c \in S$$ it is
 * $$p(c^\mathfrak{A}) \iff c^\mathfrak{B}$$

with $$a_1, ..., a_n; a \in A$$.

$$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{B}$$ are said to be isomorphic (short: $$\mathfrak{A}\cong \mathfrak{B}$$) iff there exists an isomorphism from $$\mathfrak{A}$$ to $$\mathfrak{B}$$.

Isomorphy implies Elementary Equivalence
Lemma Elementary Equivalence in Isomorpic Structures

Let $$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{B}$$ be S-Structures. It is

 * if $$\mathfrak{A}\cong \mathfrak{B}$$ then $$\mathfrak{A}\equiv \mathfrak{B}$$.

The inverse is not the case, i.e. elementary equivalent S-Structures are not isomorphic in general.

Unique specification of infinite models
In order to show that elementary equivalence does not generally imply isomorphy, consider the Peano Arithmetic, as given by the following axioms:
 * 1) $$\forall x(Sx \neq 0).$$
 * 2) $$\forall x,y((Sx = Sy) \Rightarrow x=y).$$
 * 3) $$(\varphi[0] \wedge \forall x(\varphi[x]\Rightarrow\varphi[Sx])) \Rightarrow \forall x(\varphi[x]),$$ for any formula $$\varphi$$ in the language of PA.
 * 4) $$\forall x(x+0=x).$$
 * 5) $$\forall x,y(x+Sy = S(x+y)).$$
 * 6) $$\forall x(x \cdot 0=0).$$
 * 7) $$\forall x,y(x \cdot Sy = (x \cdot y) + x).$$

Now consider N(+, *) as model A. In order to construct an elementary equivalent but not isomorphic model simply add an element a that is not yet in N. To satisfy axiom 3 we also have to add successors and predecessors starting from a. For satisfying axioms 4 to 7 the results of addiotions and multiplications of the new elements have to be added as well. So, finally we have constructed a non-isomporphic model for A that obeys all the above axioms.

Notice that this can not be done with the peano axioms, since axiom 3 ist stricter there, i.e. it is about the set of all natural numbers not just of some, as the above is.

Formalising the above leads to the following theorem:

Skolem Theorem

 * There is a non-standard model of arithmetic,

where 'non-standard' means elementary equivalent but nor isomorphic.

But it gets even worse:

Theorem

 * For every infinite structure there is a elementary equivalent and non-isomorphic structure.

We omit any proof or explaination here. This leaves us with the case of finite structures, to find out how elementary equivalence and isomorphy relate there.

Unique specification of finite models
Theorem

For finite relational structures $$\mathfrak{A}$$ and $$\mathfrak{A}$$ it is
 * $$\mathfrak{A}\cong \mathfrak{B}$$ iff $$\mathfrak{A}\equiv \mathfrak{B}$$.

Proof

"=>" follows immediately from the general case.

"<=": First, we construct a sentence to describe every possible structure generically Alltogether (by conjunction) we get a up to isomorphism unique structure. To see this, compare to the definition of isomorphy: relations and constants are determined entirely and the bijectivity is insured by the fixed number of elements.
 * The number of elements of the universe can precisely be expressed by the following:
 * ..., says that there are at least n elements in the universe
 * ..., says that the universe contains at most n elements
 * Any relation in the language can be described by describing it element by element
 * $$R x_1, ..., x_n$$, in case ...
 * $$\neg R x_1, ..., x_n$$, in case ...
 * Constants can be mapped by
 * Not to forget the equivalence relation, we add
 * Not to forget the equivalence relation, we add

title: User:Sterling/fca


text:
User talk:GP~enwikiversity

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called GP. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name GP~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:36, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:GP~enwikiversity


text:
User talk:Wvogeler

wiki publishing
If you have a chance, could you look in on the Wikiversity hub where we have been called upon to create some guidelines that will allow the Wikiversity project to move in the direction of allowing explorations that go beyond just repeating what others have previously published. Also, I hope you have seen Astronomy Project and related pages. --JWSchmidt 16:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

hello
hi, and welcome to wikiversity. I've been working on some of the astronomy related pages and I also have an interest in involving amateur astronomers in research. See Observational astronomy/Extrasolar planet for example. --mikeu 17:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation. I found your pages very interesting. Wvogeler 06:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Wvogeler


text:
User:Alnokta

Arabic English Meta

title: User:Alnokta


text:
User talk:Kornelius~enwikiversity

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Kornelius. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Kornelius~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:41, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Kornelius~enwikiversity


text: User talk:Wikipedian1039

title: User talk:Wikipedian1039


text:
User:Elaineaqs

Profile page for Wikipedia User, Elaineaqs.

title: User:Elaineaqs


text: User talk:Skytel

title: User talk:Skytel


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Food Processing/Making Tomatoe Paste

How to complete this module
Read Wipedia article "Tomatoe Paste" then complete the quiz below for self evaluation.

Self Test
/quiz

Make some tomatoe juice or sauce at home from fresh tomatoes with an adult. insert links here to appropriate cookbook recipes that can be printed out

Routing Information
If you successfully answers all questions then complete another module on this level for more practice or advance a level.

If you missed one question then complete another module on this level for additional practice.

If you missed two or more questions then go back to previous level for some more practice.

See also:
 * Tomato processing on MoonLunar_Boom_Town/Luna%27s_Tomatoes%2C_Juice_and_Picante_Sauce


text:
Self Paced Reading Labs/Food Processing/Making Tomatoe Paste/quiz

Q. What is removed from tomatoes to make it into paste?
 * A. The skin and seeds

Q. Name a food product that can be manufactured from tomatoe paste.
 * A. 1. ketchup  2. tomatoe juice 3. pizza 4. sauces

Q. What is a way that tomatoe sause is commonly packaged for markets?
 * A. 1. tin cans  2. squeeze tubes


text:
General insurance

An Introduction
Insurance companies satisfy much of society's demand for risk management. This is good for groups and individuals as it allows more risky ventures to be undertaken.

Examples of short term insurance companies are :
 * United States:
 * State Farm Group
 * Allstate Insurance
 * Berkshire Hathaway

 * Japan
 * Tokio Insurance
 * Yasuda
 * Mitsui

 * Germany
 * Allianz Vers
 * AXA Colonia Vers
 * HUK Coburg

 * United Kingdom
 * Royal and Sun Alliance
 * Guardian Royal Exchange
 * BUPA

 * France
 * AXA
 * Groupama
 * AGF

 * Italy
 * Generali
 * Assitalia
 * Sai

 * Canada
 * CGU Group Canada
 * ING Canada
 * Co-Operators Group

 * Malawi
 * General Alliance Insurance Limited

 * Tanzania
 * Star General Insurance (Tanzania) Limited
 * Thailand
 * The Viriyah Insurance

 * Zambia
 * General Alliance Insurance (Zambia) Ltd

Most insurers today are shareholder owned (proprietary) companies. There are still, however, many policyholder owned (mutual) insurance groups.

The Balance sheet
The financial position of an insurance group can be described using a balance sheet. Balance sheets show a listing of a business's (1) assets and (2) liabilities.

On the asset side, insurance companies hold various items, such as :
 * equity (ownership in other companies)
 * bonds (certificates entitling the company to interest and capital repayment from government or other companies)
 * property (real estate)
 * cash
 * other assets (works of art etc.)

The policyholder liabilities (reserves) of a short term insurer's balance sheet typically consists of :
 * liabilities with respect to past events / outstanding claims
 * outstanding reported claims reserves
 * reserves in respect of potential claims that have not yet been reported (IBNR)
 * reserves in respect of claims that could potentially be re-opened
 * reserves in respect of claims handling costs

 * liabilities with respect to potential future events / unexpired risks
 * reserves in respect of premium received but which is not yet earned
 * reserves in respect of risk periods that have not yet elapsed

The liabilities can be shown as an aggregate amount for outstanding claims as well as an aggregate amount for unexpired risks.

In addition to the above, some (re)insurers also hold reserves with respect to potential catastrophes and so-called claims equalization reserves.

Outstanding Claims
Outstanding claims liabilities exist as a result of delays between the occurrence of the loss event and the reporting of the event (reporting delays => IBNR reserves) as well as delays between the reporting and settling of claims (settlement delays => outstanding case reserves). Premature closing of claims result in re-opened claims, and this results in reserves for future potential re-opened claims.

Reserves are typically larger for classes of insurance where delays between loss events and settlement are the longest (eg. Product Liability).

Estimates of claims reserves are made using two approaches :
 * case reserves : estimating future payments in respect of individual (large) reported claims
 * statistical reserves : using statistical methods to estimate ultimate claims (and therefore the amount of required reserves)

Case reserves are only made for reported claims. They are not made for unreported claims. Statistical methods are used to estimate the amount of 'incurred but not reported' (IBNR) claims.

Claims reserves are only estimates. As such, care must be taken to allow for the assumptions and uncertainty associated with the reserve estimates. Uncertainty is usually greater for 'longer tailed' classes of business (e.g. Product Liability).

Unexpired Risks
Unexpired risk reserve (URR) is a prospective assessment of the amount that needs to be set aside in order to provide for claims and costs that will result out of unexpired future periods of cover. This could be greater than the corresponding amount of premiums charged (UPR).

Unearned premium reserves (UPR) are premiums which have been set aside because the corresponding period of insurance cover has not yet elapsed. E.g. Premiums received in 2007 in respect of insurance cover in 2008 will not add to the 'earned premium' of the insurer in 2007, but will be set aside in a reserve (UPR).

AURR is the amount by which the URR exceeds the UPR (if any). If AURR > 0, it suggests that premium rates were originally set too low (at loss making levels).

Shareholder capital
Shareholder capital (aka free capital / free assets / solvency margin / shareholder funds / capital used ) is the amount by which assets exceed policyholder liabilities.

Higher levels of shareholder capital typically allows :
 * a larger amount of business which the insurer can reasonably transact
 * bigger risks can be underwritten
 * more risk can be taken with asset investment (in pursuit of higher returns)
 * less reinsurance protection is required

The main influences on the investment strategy of a short term insurer are :
 * the nature, duration, level and currency of potential claims outgo
 * the relative size of shareholders' capital
 * relevant legistlation / regulation

A short term insurer's profit is the amount by which premiums exceed claims and cost outgo.

When calculating profit, one needs to use earned premium (as opposed to received), and incurred losses (as opposed to paid).

Incurred losses equal paid losses plus the change in reserves (claims reserves at yearend less claims reserves at the beginning of the year).

Underwriting profits equal earned premium less incurred claims less incurred costs.

Cash flow
A short term insurer's cash flow consists of :

Inflow :
 * premiums
 * investment income (dividends from shares / interest from bonds)
 * capital inflow (from shareholders)
 * reinsurance receipts (recoveries)

Outflow :
 * claims
 * costs
 * investment made in shares / bonds
 * distribution payments (dividends) to owners (shareholders) and creditors (bondholders) of the insurer
 * tax to the government
 * reinsurance payments (premiums)

Reinsurance
Reinsurance protects insurers against claims and losses from events which could otherwise threaten the continued existence of the insurance company.

Premium rating
Premiums are the amounts paid by policyholders to insurers for protection against unintentional and accidental losses. The starting point with premium calculation is normally the determination of expected claims outgo (aka the risk premium).

Experience rating is an approach adopted where the premium charges depends (at least in part) on the policyholder's past claims experience. It can be applied retrospectively (where premiums charged for past periods of cover are adjusted) or prospectively (where premiums are determined for future periods of cover). Experience rating can be applied with reference to either claims frequency or claims size.

The risk premium
The risk premium is the amount of premium needed to cover the expected claim amount of a policy. It is defined as :

Risk premium = expected number of claims x expected claim amount per claim

This can be expresed in terms of the insured value as follow :

Expected claims ratio = expected loss frequency per policy / average insured value per policy x expected loss size

For the purpose of analysis, data is typcally grouped into homogeneous groups.

In order to correctly price contracts, insurers require a sufficient amount of relevant, complete, and reliable data. Policy data as well as claims data is required as well as additional data to allow necessary adjustments and loadings to be made.

Internal data is often more appropriate than external data, although knowledge about market experience and competitors' premium rates is very important as well.

Proposed premium rates should allow for circumstances expected during the period of cover. Abnormal data features, changes in cover provided, and trends in claims size as well as claims frequency should be allowed for (adjustments made).

A so-called burning cost approach is often adopted whereby the actual cost of losses incurred during a previous period is expressed as an annual rate per unit of insured value (exposure). This is an example of an experience based approach to rating.

The office premium
The office premium (also known as gross premium) is the theoretically correct premium that insurance companies charge policyholders.

In practice, calculations become very complicated when allowance is made for : • reporting and settlement delays • investment income • changes in policy conditions and exposure • trends in claim size and frequency

A theoretical office premium could take the risk premium as a starting point and adjust it to include loadings for commission, office expenses, unanticipated losses, reinsurance cost. The office premium should also allow for investment income earned from the investment of premium income (discounting).

The basic office premium formula is given as :

(1-k)x OP = RP*(1+d) + c*OP + FE + v*OP + VE + CF*CE + p*OP

where

• OP = Office Premium • RP = Risk Premium • FE = Fixed Expenses • CF = Expected Claims Frequency • CE = Expected Claims Expenses • k = contingency factor for expenses arising from poor investment, over-run expenses, etc • d = contingency factor for claims variability • c = commission as a percentage of Office Premium • v = variable expenses as a percentage of Office Premium • p = explicit profit criterion as a percentage of Office Premium

The basic office premium calculation formula is to demonstrate how premium formulas are built up and is not only way that premium rating process is done. The formula may be more complicated with additional items such as investment income, reinsurance, tax, etc. The level of complexity depends on how much adjustment is made to the risk premium.

Reserving
Reserves are required to cover outstanding claims as well as unexpired risks.

Estimates of outstanding claims can be done on either : • A case by case basis • Using statistical methods at a portfolio level

There are two aspects to setting (calculating) reserves : • Estimating future claims payments • Applying judgement regarding the required level of prudence (conservatism)

Most statistical methods use a tabulation of claims payments by origin period (rows) and development period (columns). Assumptions regarding the stability of the past claims development pattern as well as whether or not the pattern will continue into the future are made.

Statistical method can be applied to various aspects of the claims experience that are sufficiently stable over time and measurable (e.g. claims count or claims size development).

In practise, statistical methods can be flawed by problems that can distort the results : • Errors in the data • Large claims • Inflation • Latent claims • Catastrophes • Changes in procedure (claims reporting, settlement) • Changes in the mix of business written (e.g. liability vs material damage cover) • Insufficient or inadequate data

These problems do not, however, mean that statistical methods are useless. In practise, adjustments are often made to compensate for such problems.

The Basic chain ladder method
The Basic chain ladder method is based on the assumption that the proportion of claims from a given origin period belonging to each development period remains constant.

The Basic chain ladder methods works as follow : • tabulate claims cumulatively ; (e.g. C[2,3] is the sum of claims from origin period 2, that developed by development period 3) • calculate the development ratio d[j-1,j] = sum { C[i,j] } / sum { C[i,j-1] } • use the derived development ratios to complete the tabulation • using the tabulation – calculate the amount of claims that will develop in future periods (for each origin year)

The Basic chain ladder method implicitly assumes that past inflation will continue into the future. The Inflation adjusted chain ladder method can be used to make explicit assumptions about future inflation levels.

There are also variants of the chain ladder method that assume a stable average cost per claim. These methods require development tables for claims count as well as tables for average claims cost.

The Bornhuetter Ferguson method
The Bornhuetter Ferguson method uses an assumption regarding the claims development pattern, as well as an assumption regarding the ultimate claims for each origin period. The estimate of ultimate claims is typically made using a loss ratio assumption. For each origin year : the loss ratio assumption is then divided into an historic and future component – relative to the reserving date (using the assumptions regarding claims development pattern stability).

title: General insurance


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Talk:General insurance

I have added an introductory articale on short term (general) insurance. The areas touched on in the articale will be expanded on in approximately 10 units that I will add later.

 * Maybe you can structure this as geography specific? I know that Insurance varies between countries, and it might even vary between states and provinces within one country. Some of the concepts of insurance may be universal, and those should be covered, but things that are region specific should be labeled as such. Historybuff 03:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I will first add sections on general features (eg. reserving). There is a section on insurance markets I want to add- which will be a good place to start a section on regulatory differences in different markets. CrimsonSun 10:00 13 February 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:General insurance


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User:JWSchmidt/Blog/11 February 2007

Open content and free content  User:CQ drew my attention to this page at the One Laptop per Child wiki. There is seemingly never ending discussion of licensing content for use at education-oriented wiki websites. Much of the discussion centers on two different domains of copyleft resources, those that allow commercial re-use and those that do not. The Education networks page had an emphasis on non-commercially licensed learning resources and that got me thinking again about these two domains.

It is possible to frame Wikiversity within the context of a Free Culture movement. The "Free Culture movement" is concerned with promoting the licensing of creative works in ways that allow them to be freely copied and modified for the creation of new derivative works. The term "free" is a problem in this context. It does not mean "free of cost", it means "free of legal restrictions on copying and use". A related idea is "free content". We say that Wikiversity has "free content" in that the text and files at Wikiversity can be freely copied and used without restrictions such as a non-commercial use restriction. The only serious limitation is that Wikiversity asks that this free content be correctly attributed to those who created it.

Another related idea is "open content". An important distinction between "free content" and "open content" is that open content resources are sometimes licensed in a way that does not allow commercial redistribution. Such non-commercial restrictions are commonly used by universities that make their learning resources available on the internet (see OpenCourseWare). Bricks and Mortar institutions often do not want "their" learning resources to be used by others for profit. When a non-commercial license is use, the learning resources are not as freely available as they would be under a license like the GFDL that is used at Wikiversity.

A problem arising from these two domains of learning resources (truly free content vs non-commercial use only) is that Wikiversity participants can be tempted to call for use of a less free license that would be compatible with educational resources like OpenCourseWare (for example, see OpenCourseWare University Collaboration, 5 February 2007). Wikiversity probably needs to do a better job with the Free content page and make sure that Wikiversity participants can easily find that page.

title: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/11 February 2007


text: User talk:CrimsonSun

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User:Phreek~enwikiversity

User:MaryCordova

title: User:Phreek~enwikiversity


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User:JWSchmidt/Blog/12 February 2007

Round corners  Soon after the launch of Wikiversity User:Sebmol put some code into the Monobook.css file that allows some browsers to make rounded corners for the buttons and other features of the wiki interface. A few days later there was a complaint and then the rounded corners code was shut off. Months later the code for rounded corners was again switched on. More than a month went by and then another complaint was made. See the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css.

There seem to be several points of view with respect to the rounded corners.
 * "I like the rounded corners, lets keep them"
 * "I think they are ugly, get rid of them"
 * ""The code is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional but not valid CSS. We should only use W3C-validated code."

My understanding of the World Wide Web Consortium is that it functions as a way to generate standards that can guide the creation of software such as web browsers. The purpose of these standards is to prevent problems that would arise from multiple incompatible methods of coding that might arise without a central set of standards. In the case of rounded corners, some browsers can use non-standard CSS that will generate the rounded corners. Some browsers do not use this non-standard CSS and they simply display the corners as right angles. In other words, the CSS for rounded corners does not cause any problems, it is simply a type of code that is not part of the W3C standards.

It has been suggested during the discussion that there is a way to make rounded corners while remaining within the W3C specifications (rounded corners, rounded tabs). Hopefully someone can figure out a way to provide an acceptable (to all) option for those who want to use round corners.

title: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/12 February 2007


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User talk:Mirwin/other sites

One Laptop Per Child

title: User talk:Mirwin/other sites


text: User talk:Alnokta

title: User talk:Alnokta


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User:M3rkury~enwikiversity

about: My name is Randy Kimball and I am currently a 4th year medical student at Albany Medical College. I am applying for a residency in General Surgery, and hope to find a spot come March.

interests: My academic interests include how open collaboration and peer review can advance the field of surgery. I recently started the online entity openSurgical as an early experiment. We'll see how it goes.

title: User:M3rkury~enwikiversity


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User talk:M3rkury~enwikiversity

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called M3rkury. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name M3rkury~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:37, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:14, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:M3rkury~enwikiversity


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User talk:Jonascox

Self Paced Reading Labs
Hi Jonas, this is the project proposal I am working on that could use some educational expertise: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Self_Paced_Reading_Labs Mirwin 03:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Now standard practice is too sign your posts on discussion pages with four tilda's. The server substitutes your account name and a time stamp like this ---> Mirwin 03:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Standard Welcome
==Links of Potential Interest==

 * Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool

Mirwin 06:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Big opportunity
To record some dialogue for an up and coming computer game. Let me know if you are interested or willing and I will get a link for you. You will need a microphone and a software sound tool such as the free open source Adacity .... I can get you a link for that too if you have an idle hour to invest in helping create "Space Traffic Control". Let me know at my talk page. Thanks. Mirwin 06:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jonascox


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User:Jonascox

Jonas, check your discussion page. People do not generally leave messages or edit this page. It is considered your personal space like a personal desktop. Discussion page is like bulletin board. Mirwin 03:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User:Jonascox


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User:John Havey

I am retired in Salt Lake City, Utah. At this point I am interested in collaboration on sustainability in Salt Lake City, County, and valley.

Help

 * contents
 * editing
 * edit summary
 * manual of style
 * wiki 101

Pages

 * name rules
 * creation
 * subpages
 * namespaces
 * naming conventions
 * categories I
 * categories II
 * templates
 * redirection to move/rename
 * requests for deletion

Discussion

 * centralized
 * colloquium

Content

 * adding content
 * copying

Drafts

 * topic draft
 * page draft
 * talk draft

title: User:John Havey


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User:JWSchmidt/Portal

Is virtual reality really an invention of the computer age? To think so would be like thinking that fusion did not exist before humans detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1952. Human consciousness has always existed within a virtual reality generated by human brains.

Virtual reality definitions: A narrow definition - a computer simulation of reality. A broad definition -  any model of reality.

Some philosophers of long ago issued warnings about the unreliability of our brain-generated virtual realities. Are we trapped by our senses in some version of Plato's Cave? Many people have been very willing to accept our personal experience of the world as THE true depiction of reality. Other sages have advised us to escape from the world we know through our senses and to ignore our brain-generated ego and seek to become one with the universe. How can we ever be sure that we know the true or ultimate nature of reality?

Just how limited is the brain-generated virtual reality that we take for granted? In his allegory of the cave, Plato wrote about the Sun as being symbolic of the Ideal Forms that Plato imagined as being fundamental to the true reality of the world. But think about how little philosophers like Plato knew about the Sun. Aristotle wrote about a "fifth element",  Aether as the material that constitutes celestial bodies such as the sun. Fire, Earth, Air, and Water were imagined to be the four elemental components of objects on Earth, but the stars were imagined to be eternal ("aether" is from the Greek word for eternity).

We now know that stars are born and die and that many of the atoms that are components of everything on Earth are "star dust". For 99.999% of human existence our understanding of the world was divorced from any true appreciation of the nature of physical reality because the atomic constituents are too tiny to be resolved by human senses like vision. It is now known that the iron that carries oxygen in our blood and the oxygen itself were generated by fusion reactions inside stars billions of years ago. Every second of every human life our bodies are streaming with solar neutrinos blasted from the sun's nuclear furnace. In fact, most of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy that our senses fail to register. The visible universe of burning stars is only a tiny fraction of our universe's reality.

I think Plato was correct to realize that our senses present us with a limited view of reality.....something a bit like shadows on a wall. But Plato did not know about evolution and the idea that our senses must have evolved to do a fairly good job of revealing reality to us or else we would not be able to survive. So it is not that the virtual reality produced by our brain is totally misleading. We simply must respect our own limitations and find ways to do better than what comes naturally to our limited bodies.

Now that scientific investigation has begun to provide a good understanding of the limitations imposed on us by our senses and our brains, we can ask if it is possible to use tools such as computers to help provide us with an improved version of reality. And I mean "version" not just "vision". We are in the business of creating the type of world we want to live in. Can we use computers as tools for both learning about the world and changing the world? For most people, understanding oxygen atoms and neutrinos is a matter of learning about them through the virtual reality of human language. Computers and computer-based tools like wiki are tools for amplifying the power of human language.

Hypertext
A major advance that computers provide over conventional books is the hypertext link. Pages of HTML on the internet are an educational resource that we are still learning how to fully make use of. Can we also harness such computer power for the construction of new reality?

Like any tool, computers can be used for both good and bad. Think of computer technology as being able to provide something analogous to a lens, a corrective appendage that can improve upon the limited capabilities of the human body. What is the basic nature of the defect that computers can correct?

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein worked in the tradition of skeptical philosophy, always looking for the ways that we "go off the rails" in our thinking about the world. Wittgenstein described the sort of philosophical therapy we need as being a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. And he meant both that language bewitches us and that we make use of language as a tool with which we go into battle against bewitchments.

I want to suggest that we make use of computers and hypertext and the cooperative nature of the wiki environment to do battle against all of the mistaken ideas that we have inherited as cultural baggage from the past. Can we make use of computer-generated virtual realities to battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence? Many online virtual realities are designed as escapist entertainment. I do not try to argue against such entertainments, but I do ask if we can make the magic of fiction work for us, if we can create fictional realities that open our minds to our unseen and unappreciated bewitchments.

Recreate
The human brain is a device for receiving culture from the previous generation and using that programming to guide us through life. We imbibe the virtual reality of our culture and get on with life, accepting the unquestioned assumptions upon which our society functions, just as Plato and Aristotle accepted the assumption that celestial objects must be made of something fundamentally different than their own bodies. It takes creative genius to rip away the distortions imposed upon us by our learning and see reality in a clearer way than has been possible in the past. How do we make use of computers to aid us in this struggle to escape bewitchment and to promote the on-going quest to discover and re-create reality?

Play is important. The primate brain is designed to make use of juvenile play as an energizing system for learning about the world. We learn best when we are having fun and our defenses can be relaxed. So we need computer tools and computer environments where we can play at the important work of questioning our assumptions. We must play a game of "What If?" in which we are free to let loose of the ideas we normally assume to be true. We need new ways to explore what the world might look like if we were given a new set of assumptions.

Our species has a long history of trying to imagine a better way of life. Many of us wonder why the world is the way it is, but a few creative people imagine how the world might be and then actually MAKE IT SO. Can we use computer-generated virtual realities as tools to help us change the world? For example, if we could construct a new social system within a computerized virtual reality simulation, then would people in the real world be encouraged to try to make that simulated social system a part of their lives outside of the simulation? Can wiki communities be cultural incubators where new patterns of social interaction are discovered and tested?

Can play within a wiki environment (where all information is free and open) lead us to new ways of living that can be applied to the real world? This essay originally appeared at RLS Wikia.

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