Forum: social network for the surveillance and prevention of workplace accidents

In 2008, academic researchers and public service officials created a university extension studies platform based on online and on-site meetings denominated "Work-Related Accidents Forum: Analysis, Prevention, and Other Relevant Aspects. Its aim was to help public agents and social partners to propagate a systemic approach that would be helpful in the surveillance and prevention of work-related accidents. This article describes and analyses such a platform. Online access is free and structured to: support dissemination of updated concepts; support on-site meetings and capacity to build educational activities; and keep a permanent space for debate among the registered participants. The desired result is the propagation of a social-technical-systemic view of work-related accidents that replaces the current traditional view that emphasizes human error and results in blaming the victims. The Forum uses an educational approach known as permanent health education, which is based on the experience and needs of workers and encourages debate among participants. The forum adopts a problematizing pedagogy that starts from the requirements and experiences of the social actors and stimulates support and discussions among them in line with an ongoing health educational approach. The current challenge is to turn the platform into a social networking website in order to broaden its links with society.

Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0

Increasing public interest in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era promotes a dramatically, rapid and deep change in science itself. The emergence and expansion of new technologies and internet-based tools is leading to new means to improve scientific methodology and communication, assessment, promotion and certification. It allows methods of acquisition, manipulation and storage, generating vast quantities of data that can further facilitate the research process. It also improves access to scientific results through information sharing and discussion. Content previously restricted only to specialists is now available to a wider audience. This context requires new management systems to make scientific knowledge more accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the reach of scientific information. The new science and research quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such as blogs, social bookmarks and online reference managers, Twitter and others offer alternative, transparent and more comprehensive information about the active interest, usage and reach of scientific publications. Another of these new filters is the Research Blogging platform, which was created in 2007 and now has over 1,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted about peer-reviewed research on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology. This study takes a closer look at RB, in order to get insights into its contribution to the rapidly changing landscape of scientific communication.

Competência informacional e midiática no ensino superior: Desafios e propostas para o Brasil

A presença das tecnologias e das mídias é hoje tão importante, que é impossível ignorá-la. Os calouros e estudantes universitários de hoje têm telefones celulares com fotos digitais e ídeos. Eles usam blogs, twitter e sites de redes sociais. Ao mesmo tempo, leem livros e artigos, e fazem seus projetos e a lição de casa. Continuamente, diferentes tecnologias e novas informações estão impactando o ensino superior. Isto exige uma rápida atualização da competência informacional e midiática pelos alunos. Apesar do impacto progressivo da tecnologia digital na cultura acadêmica contemporânea, é imperativo resgatar e consolidar um compromisso mais crítico com a informação, mídia e tecnologia. Nós defendemos a convergência da literacia da informação e da literacia dos media no ensino superior. O Projeto CIMES (Competência em Informação e Mídia no Ensino Superior) está em estágio inicial. O presente artigo tem como objetivo revisar as questões teóricas, políticas e práticas sobre a educação para a competência em informação e mídia no ensino superior, especialmente no Brasil. O objetivo final do Projeto CIMES é fornecer uma estrutura para desenvolver programas educacionais no Brasil que tenham a competência em informação e a competência midiática como uma aplicação transversal no ensino superior. O atual estágio do projeto permite apenas traçar um quadro geral analítico

Multidimensional Projections for Visual Analysis of Social Networks

Visual analysis of social networks is usually based on graph drawing algorithms and tools. However, social networks are a special kind of graph in the sense that interpretation of displayed relationships is heavily dependent on context. Context, in its turn, is given by attributes associated with graph elements, such as individual nodes, edges, and groups of edges, as well as by the nature of the connections between individuals. In most systems, attributes of individuals and communities are not taken into consideration during graph layout, except to derive weights for force-based placement strategies. This paper proposes a set of novel tools for displaying and exploring social networks based on attribute and connectivity mappings. These properties are employed to layout nodes on the plane via multidimensional projection techniques. For the attribute mapping, we show that node proximity in the layout corresponds to similarity in attribute, leading to easiness in locating similar groups of nodes. The projection based on connectivity yields an initial placement that forgoes force-based or graph analysis algorithm, reaching a meaningful layout in one pass. When a force algorithm is then applied to this initial mapping, the final layout presents better properties than conventional force-based approaches. Numerical evaluations show a number of advantages of pre-mapping points via projections. User evaluation demonstrates that these tools promote ease of manipulation as well as fast identification of concepts and associations which cannot be easily expressed by conventional graph visualization alone. In order to allow better space usage for complex networks, a graph mapping on the surface of a sphere is also implemented.