For my service learning I assisted in maintaining a dog and cat rescues database. The database is called Trackabeast, or TAB for short. While I had helped in updating it prior to the class, the readings in the class gave me new perspectives on TAB, and how we use it as a rescue. I feel that in order to make this short paper actually make sense, you have to learn a little bit about Track a Beast, the database that we use.
One of the most important characteristics of Web 2.0 is participation; and going back to an earlier reading by Yochai Benkler, I felt the database work was a good example of commons based peer production. Benkler defines commons based peer production as when “the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects mostly without traditional hierarchical organization (and often, but not always, without or with decentralized financial compensation)[i].”
The way TAB works is that ideally, you enter a dog’s information the moment they arrive in our care. Their description, photo, medical information and where they are located (in foster care or at our facility.). The next step is when they get adopted, to enter the adopter’s information such as name address and email etc, and then change the location of the dog to that person, so that we can see they adopted the dog. Each dog is assigned a tag number, which they are required to wear on their collar, such as 4790. This is so if the dog ever gets lost, and the shelter cannot get a hold of the adopter, they can call us and give us this number, and we can look up the adopter’s information and if necessary come and pick up the dog for them until they are able to get him or her.
Rather than having one contact person dictate who does what, we set up one email list that went to everyone that worked on the database. We make sure to communicate what we each do, for example when someone sends an update on a dog and I update the database, I reply to the list “DONE” so that we do not duplicate efforts. It was quite similar to the Clickworkers project, only instead of marking a few craters, we had people spend a few minutes entering a dogs’ information into TAB.
While this might not be considered to be a written set of rules, it is close to some of what Stephen Meadows spoke about. The rule sets used for the database are indeed “iterative and often unconscious, but without them we would not get anything done. It is similar, as Meadows states, to getting from Point A to Point B, where Point A is when the dog arrives, and Point B is when the dog is adopted.
Overall I feel that the most successful aspect of this experience for me was working on the database as a collective, together with others and doing all the coordinating via online. When the database was started over a year ago, one of the problems we ran into was that we only had two people who we trusted the files with. The files we used were paper files, and when a dog got adopted we would enter the dog’s information at the file. The problem with this was that after adoption events the files would get shuffled around and if one person wasn’t able to do it and they had the files, no one could get the information.
In our class we learned the advantages and disadvantages of everything becoming web based, and while a disadvantage would be that every once in a while, the web based Track a Beast server is down, the pros much outweigh the cons.
One of the pros is that it is not a commonly used program as far as we know – to give you an idea of how small it is, when the server is down, it gives you a 540 number to call, not an 800 number. Again, our usage of TAB is easily compared to Meadows and his Four Steps of Interaction; observation, exploration, modification, and reciprocal change. When entering animals into the database, there are of course times where we wish something about the database was different. One example is that for adding in shots and medical treatment, an observation that many of us made, was that there was no place to add a heartworm test. However after some exploration on my part, I found that I could actually add “Heartworm” Test to the drop down menu, and then type in whether it was negative or positive. In this case, it was us that made a change, however there have been other times when we have requested a change, and they have made it instead of us. Making these changes is another reason I found this experience to be quite successful.
Another aspect of my service learning was to try to use social marketing websites and tools to benefit the group. Prior to this semester, LDCRF had Facebook group, however it was not extremely active. One of the things I did at the start of the semester was start a Face book page, so that people could become “fans” of the rescue. Using tags, I began an ad campaign on Facebook that advertised our page to people whose interests met certain “tags.” This was extremely effective – a summary of the ad is below:
The ad targeted people that lived in the United States, who in their interests in their profile listed one of more of the following tags: Animal Rights, Cats, Dogs, Horses, Veganism, Vegetarianism or Walking My Dog.
When clicking on the ad, it would take people to the Facebook page I created for the group. What was great about the ad is that is showed you the resulting number of people who actually saw the ad, and how many of them clicked on the ad.
The page also gives the admin person specific insights, such as what percentage of females vs males look at the page, which in this case is 87% females, and 13% males. In breaks it down by age groups as well as telling you where you have the most people: Washington 77; Alexandria 40; Arlington 35; Reston 18; Culpeper 12; Aol 9; Sterling 7; Atlanta 6; Fairfax 6. (Interestingly enough, Aol is considered a city.)
The creation of the facebook page as well as the creation of the YouTube channel I feel were some of the most successful points of my service learning, as I put my understanding of the different virtual representations one could make. While one of the readings I struggled with was the Ryan reading on Cyperspace, Virtuality and the Text. However after becoming more involved and creating these profiles and pages on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr for the rescue, I feel these are examples of online virtual representations of the rescue, which helped me understand the concepts of virtual as fake and virtual as potential. This also contributed to my feeling that my service learning was successful, as I did not think I was ever going to be able to understand that reading at all!
Not only did the database work and social marketing work I did benefit my own learning, but I felt it contributed to the Rescue group as well, as it helped get the brand and name of the rescue more in the public eye and also increase their donor database so more funds would be available.
