This paper explores using wearable computing devices to perform "sousveillance" (inverse surveillance) as a counter to organizational surveillance.

The techneducator stands at the nexus, Janus-like, between the realms of education and technology. These two worlds meet head-on through the collisions experienced and instigated by the author of this dissertation in the conceptualization and creation of polysynchronous virtual learning environments. The dissertation itself explores multiple strands of inquiry into the author's emergence as a techneducator over two decades of working in the worlds of technology and education. The intention of this inquiry is to develop a narrative picture of the struggle to relocalize developments in technology more firmly within the purview of the educator, as opposed to the present situation where developments in educational technology are primarily controlled by programmers, technicians, administrators and corporations. Commencing with the realization that the understanding of how technology and education should interrelated, in order to redress the imbalance that positions educators in the role of being primarily passive participants in the imposition of technology on education, the author embraced the emergent nature of inquiry and the focus of the dissertation shifted from a consideration of groups of educators learning in the virtual learning environment of MOOkti that he had created, towards a narrative inquiry of his own practice, particularly as a creator of learning environments. The resulting text, in which theory is embedded in metaphor through out the narrative, developed into the articulation of the techneducator effect. This effect in turn became the foundation for the conceptualization of educational technology manifest in COLLIDE, the Collaborative Object-based Lifetime Learning Interaction Design Engine, described in Chapter Five. COLLIDE is presented as a narrative d...

This paper describes using wearable computing devices to perform "sousveillance" (inverse surveillance) as a counter to organizational surveillance. A variety of wearable computing devices generated different kinds of responses, and allowed for the collection of data in different situations. Visible sousveillance often evoked counter-performances by front-line surveillance workers. The juxtaposition of sousveillance with surveillance generates new kinds of information in a social surveillance situation.

In this paper we aim to build an understanding on how the concept of place is encoded in the design of online communities. Current activities in such communities suggest that users appropriate virtual space through (self)-representation. In general, the investment with meaning of space is likely to define places on top of it. So we are interested to find out whether places emerge in cyberspace. Brief analyses of existent online communities show that the understandings of space and place vary from one community to another, which relates to their capability to connect with the local place-based communities. Searching for a theoretical framework that would explain these observations, we explore first how different constructs of place associate in theory with various views on the nature of space. Second, we are interested to find out how users perceive cyberspace, by questioning whether an analogue to Lynch’s taxonomy of images and the use of cognitive maps are meaningful in this context. We wish to use this information in future design of hybrid online communities, in order to bridge the virtual with the physical space for social activities. 2