Argunet Blog

The Argunet Server is up again. We hope that it will work more reliable now. If you have any problems, please write a note at our mailing list.

Argunet has been awarded the e-Learning price of Free University Berlin (FU). It has been nominated in the category “Didactics”. The Center for Digital System at Free University Berlin distinguishes three outstanding e-Learning projects each year.

Argunet is part of an interdisciplinary project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research which aims at assessing the benefits and risks of organic computing. The project is coordinated by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research. Argunet will be used to map the arguments for or against developing and applying organic computing technology.

In the last two months we have focused on getting things done. Instead of wasting time with buggy releases, we have skipped some version numbers and have now reached a state that deserves to be called 0.9.0! This is the last beta version of Argunet. Nearly all features for 1.0 are implemented and the bug list is reduced to a few harmless creatures. We can now work exclusively on making Argunet as stable as possible.

The server has also been updated and is now incompatible with older versions of Argunet. If you want to work online, please update your client! For more info please take a look at our release notes.

Argunet is again presented in Bayreuth. We reconstruct a short section of Humes “Dialogues concerning natural religion” with the course for argumentation theory. Additionally, we introduce students into the  advanced features of Argunet in a two-hour tutorial. Thanks to professor Hegselmann for his warm hospitality!

In a first pilot project Argunet has been employed for several weeks in two ninth classes of the Schiller Gymnasium, a high school in Berlin. The students learned to structurize and analyze debates with Argunet argument maps. These argument maps were then used as a basis for writing short essays.

Thanks to all students and the two teachers for participating in this stimulating experiment! It has not only been fun to watch a whole class reconstructing argument maps with Argunet, but it has given us important insights into what specific requirements are to be met by Argunet to be ready for the classroom.

So far it has not been easy to create argument maps with Argunet without a personal introduction from us. Although we have tried to make everything as simple as possible, there are some features you will not find without our help. A documentation with tutorials is in preparation, but it will not be published until November.

To make things easier for you, we have therefore started a mailing list, where we will try to answer all your questions. Please do not hesitate to ask!

We will also use the mailing list to announce new releases, so please join the list if you want to be kept up-to-date.

We have updated the Argunet Server for more features and faster communication. Since we still are in the beta phase of development we have decided to do without backwards compatibility. You can still work on your old debates on the server. However clients older than 0.2.2 will no longer communicate with the server, so please update your installation!

Argunet is presented at the “risk mapping” project in Augsburg, a project of the MPS (Project group for social research Munich) and the WZU (environment science center). Argunet’s features are demonstrated by interactively reconstructing arguments on the risks of nanoparticles.

Argunet is used at a Summer School of the Studienstftung des deutschen
Volkes at Rot an der Rot. Various kinds of debates (political,
juridical, economical, scientific) are reconstructed and analysed with
Argunet. In sum, Argunet and the underlying reconstruction method has
proved capable of handling such diverse topics.