Brad’s Ve-learning project

Welcome to a training session on Social Bookmarking, emphasizing Delicious.  This is a rework of a videocon presentation, and of necessity primarily a lecture type format (running time approx 45 mins excluding activities).    

This window is the principal ‘home’ window as it contains all instructions.

Ultimately you will have a Powerpoint running in a new window (or SlideShare in this window) where you will be changing slides, an accompanying podcast audio (which will prompt you for slide changes) running in another window behind it, & 3 Delicious windows also behind for when you might find them useful.

So, you will need 5 (6 if you use Powerpoint in preference to SlideShare) windows open:

1)  Using a right click, open in three new windows the links http://del.icio.us/bremertafe

http://del.icio.us/horticulture  and

http://del.icio.us/qld

(Bremertafe is a Delicious site designed for administrative purposes, in this case covering the basic operations of a TAFE library.  Horticulture is another delicious site designed around educational usage i.e. for students & teachers of Horticulture. 

The Qld site is a play area for you without having to go to the trouble of opening an account – user name is qld, password is 123qwe )

These 3 windows can run in the background until you need to refer to them.

2)  For the main Powerpoint presentation , open in a new window, this link  Bookmarking with Delicious.  (Alternatively, you can use the SlideShare presentation already visible below, though it is at a lower resolution).

3)  Lastly,  open in another window   http://jonesb2.podOmatic.com/entry/2007-05-11T07_39_39-07_00   On that page locate the Podcast link ‘Social Bookmarking - esp Delicious’.  This is the Podcast audio to accompany the Powerpoint / SlideShare.  Start the Podcast (it runs for around 45 mins) and adjust the volume.  Return to view the Powerpoint or SlideShare.  The audio should be running and you are now in charge of changing the slides at the appropriate prompts.

You can pause / stop at any time & go to the delicious sites, especially the play area where you can post some links, make notes & tags.

You are encouraged to post comments in the comment space below.

Yes, my voice is monotonous & the Powerpoint is basic.  But I am not Superman here, the theme is ICT & I am juggling the blog, powerpoint, SlideShare, PodOmatic & 3 Delicious sites to try to put the exercise together.  Hope you get something out of it!

[slideshare id=47590&doc=bookmarking-delicious-21205&w=425]

 Credits:

Thanks to the Bremer TAFE library staff for all opening Delicious accounts & making a network possible, which then built the Bremertafe collection of links.

Thanks to the Horticulture SPIG of Queensland TAFE teachers who inspired the Horticulture set & contributed most of the links.

Thanks to the Queensland TAFE veMentoring network for the videocon invitation which encouraged me to open the Qld site as a play area.

Here is an audio of the presentation.  The original was pretty disjointed due to activities etc, so this one was done after the event & in accordance with the notes below, plus some elaboration.  Approx 45 mins, another for the insomniacs…

Did a presentation at for the Qld TAFE VeMentoring group last week.  Used a tweaked Blogger blog as the presentation tool (see under activities).  As it was not a Powerpoint I have taken the text from the presentation & filled it out a little as notes, as per below…

Blogs

Blogs & wikis are a couple of the foundations of Web 2.0.  Link to Web 2.0 article in Wikipedia.Web 2.0 is a much debated concept.  For those happy with it, it generally suggests a web that emphasizes user generated content, online collaborative potential & sharing, & tagging.  Link to Blog article in Wikipedia. 

Some Web 2.0ey sites where I have personal accounts (with links)

• Blogs :
  • Blogger (Google owned, most popular blog, good starter),  
  • Wordpress (though I’d also probably recommend starting your account via an Aussie source with an educational focus known as Edublogs – Wordpress is a good move after you get the hang of Blogger & has some great functionality),
  • Vox (very colourful, has own direct storage for 25MB audio & 50MB video posts as well as links to larger files hosted elsewhere e.g. YouTube)
• Wikis :
  • JotSpot (recently acquired by Google, so watch this space),
  • pbWiki,
  • Wikispaces with an ad free version for education at wikispaces (also an arrangement with Edublogs),
  • SeedWiki (which has an interesting tag cloud search so you can see what use others are making of their wikis)
• Social bookmarking :
  • Delicious (the flavour of the moment),
  • Furl (archives webpages as well),
  • Connotea (academic research reference link sharing)
• Image sharing :  
  • Flickr there are others, but Flickr has its fingers in all sorts of pies –post to blog, by email, create natty widgets, feeds to Wordpress blogs, & it creates 5 different image & file sizes (i.e. quick & dirty optimising for web use), & a copyright friendly Creative Commons.
• Podcasts :
  • PodOmatic (are others – I’ve only recently started this one, but am impressed)
• Video :  …and if you thought we were in the education game…
  • Youtube, banned site (apparently “porn”), so access from home
  • GoogleVideo, Ditto
  • YahooVideo, would be accessible if could download current versions of the likes of Flash & Quicktime
  • iFilm Ditto
• RSS :
  • Bloglines

All these are freebies, often as a taster for pay versions.  What they offer varies, sometimes considerably, & there are often upgrades & changes.  Otherwise life would get boring, wouldn’t it?

Blogs

Basic outline of ‘blogs’:

Short for ‘Web Log’

Can be free or paid

Can be hosted or incorporated in own domain

Individual websites, with comments & search are collectively known as ‘The Blogosphere’  

• 71.1 million blogs : currently tracked by Technorati
• Gartner : usage expected to peak at 100 million in 2007

Blog search engines were demonstrated : Technorati, GoogleBlogSearch.  

Blogpulse was also looked at as a special case of mapping entries over time (trends) & allowing for comparison.

Common observable things on Blogs

Looking at general default & common blog features,

…features vary between Blogs
…the viewer sees what author makes available (public, friends, private)

• Template : appearance & layout
• Profile : author’s ‘name’, about, photo
• Tags (labels) : author’s cataloguing of post content
• Blogroll : links to other blogs, websites etc
• Posts : most allow text / photos, some also audio / video
• Comments : can read & add comments on posts
• Archives : earlier posts – these were displayed on one of my basic default template blogs

Author’s view  of Blogger

From the blog author’s point of view, once logged in there were other considerations

• Tags (folksonomy) – this is basically amateur cataloguing.  These were used as the basic navigational tool for the presentation, & both ordered the posts while allowing for non-sequential moving around & adapting the presentation.·          
• Hyperlinks – demonstrated several times by opening links in new windows.· 
• Search capability – demonstrated by finding post by using participant’s first name

Uses…?

It was suggested that there was a degree of technolust out there & a lot of talk about new technologies.  However, it was suggested that the user should road test any of these to ensure they do serve some practical purpose rather than try them out on a class because someone suggested they were a good idea.  Over a couple of years, as situations arose I had developed a feel for what I personally could use them for, & together with other suggestions this is a possible list:·        

• Project record: e.g. my VeLearning project was chronologically recorded on a blog·        
• Ideas (personal) – most blogs were of the ‘online diary’ type·        
• Ideas (feedback / comments) – testing an idea with a number of people, allowing for comments to be made (e.g. my 10yo daughter’s class put their poems up – under pseudonyms – & others comment on them, & they comment on other students’ work from elsewhere around the globe.  This could just as easily be used in a work context)·        
• Clippings from various websites, mailing lists & other subs·        
• Photo / audio / video based blogs·        
• Message board·        
• Newsletter·        
• Communities for people with similar interests, esp obscure·        
• Collect email rather than have some of it clog your inbox·        
• Personal soapbox e.g. political & other stuff, such as the Drudge Report, citizen journalism etc·        
• Website for short lived things such as events, exhibitions etc, (easy creation & pulldown)·        
• Portfolio for student class efforts etc, where prospective employers could view on the web & consider e-capability as part of skill set·        
• Note on Audit  In an earlier videoconference some people had expressed concerns over meeting audit requirements for evidence etc.  It was noted that the settings could vary the number of posts visible or archived, & if they were set at say 100 visible posts this would make for one large webpage & cover most likely situations.  It was then possible to print out as hardcopy, if preferred, or save as an HTML page, which should cover such audit needs.  ·        
• ???????? – whatever else suits

…Where to from here…?

Play…& keep playing…
…experiment…images, audio, video…Try other blogs…Only use it with others if have road tested & know it works Try more Web 2.0ey stuff…Have fun !

Activities

A)  It was made clear to participants that the presenter was not using Powerpoint, but had customised a Blogger template for the session, with settings that allowed for each post to display as a separate webpage.  At one stage participants were asked to send an email to a given email address with

1. Their first name as subject
2. Why they were there & some hobbies as the body of the message
3. A digital photo as an attachment

It might be noted that Blogger does not at present support an email image to blog function (some blogs do).  While participants did not know it at the time, this email address was an upload to the presenter’s Flickr account, using the email address setting that also allowed for the photo to be auto uploaded to the blog, with the email subject (first name) appearing as the post heading, & the email body as message.  Later in the presentation the presenter used the blog’s search function to locate a post by a participant’s name, (hopefully) to their, & others, surprise.  The presenter then clicked on “Show all Posts”, making the blog sequential, & displaying all the photos that participants had unknowingly uploaded (along with the presentation posts & a number of other posts that were not used).  Participants were then asked to use the collaborative capabilities of the blog by commenting on others individual posted photos, hobbies etc.

B)      Elsewhere in the presentation participants were asked to set up a Blogger blog.  It was suggested to those who already had a blog that they try setting up another with Wordpress or Vox for comparison.  It was hoped they would have a chance to a new post, an image upload, an email upload & and edit.

Hopefully they got something out of it!

Well the previous exercise is pretty well complete.

This is a new one.

I have been asked to do a presentation on Blogs & Wikis at Bris North.

I will use this site to save and archive that presentation.

After several attempts, lets see if this works…

Our IT lockdowns prohibit YouTube & Google.  It didn’t like Yahoo video as it needed a newwer version of Flash.  This time I’ll try IFilm…

Ah, should have known our tech wouldn’t be up to it.

I guess one of the early brushes with this stuff I had was a while back while looking at SirsiDynix Institute’s Web Archive which covers many Web 2ey things at http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/archive.php esp the excellent ideas loaded summary session by Meredith Farkas, titled Wiki: The Ultimate Tool For Online Collaboration .  In this one she makes reference to a wiki for subject resources created by Chad Boeninger of Ohio Uni Library at http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/index.php/Main_Page . 

I’ve also seen this one referred to by others, so I’m not sure how many good examples are actually out there, or how many academics (with the publishing pressures & the need to appear innovative etc) are writing about a limited number of viable models.

I’ll add this one to the blogroll http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/, but the boss was particularly taken with the diagram on when to use old communications, when to use new ones & why.  Nice blog, nice diag at http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/blogsBlogging/

I also liked some comments:

“What are the reasons we use faulty judgement, and use the wrong technology for communications? …

…these technologies are getting better and cheaper at the same time, and there is a long-overdue trend to more simplicity and intuitiveness in some new tools. Unfortunately, many large organizations remain in the communication stone age, locked into expensive, centrally managed, unfriendly, sub-optimal legacy technologies. The change to decentralized, free, and open tools is just too frightening for many heavily-invested organizations to contemplate”.

Bugger it, I’ll post the whole diagram to pretty things up a bit. Thank you Dave Pollard…

The post below with the PodOmatic graphic showed as code when I loaded it in WYSIWYG mode.  A penny dropped, & I redid it in the HTML mode…& it worked – ah, the learnings !  So I thought I’d try to resurrect the Zoho presentation that appears as code in the post beneath titled ‘Finale- or is it?’.  Unfortunately, there was still a glitch, but there is obviously a difference between uploading the post in WYSIWYG & HTML modes.

So I emailed Zoho.  Quick response back, suggesting that the problem was related to the use of an apostrophe in my show title (they’re working on it), & that a rename/resave should do the trick.  I was also right about the HTML mode.

On trying it appeared that it still had dramas as the code didn’t delete the apostrophe in the code after a resave.  So I manually changed both references in the code & the slideshow worked…but something else meant that lines ran off the bottom of the page.  So I again tinkered & adjusted the vertical margin from 300 to 350, & this is the result. 

The audio of our presentations was recorded with the intention of putting it all on CD/DVD.  Personally, I prefer my own editorial control so, again in keeping with the spirit of this whole exercise, I have started an account with PodOmatic.  Richard (bless his cotton socks) took the original audio (odd format) & initially converted it to WAV, then we used Audacity & the LAME encoder to convert to an MP3.  I’ve just uploaded it, so now to give it a try…

So, dear excited reader, you needn’t bother with the CD as you can download all 54 MB -which plays at about a MB a minute – of MP3.

Slide 5: Online demos of several of these

Slide 4: showed results of Wikipedia search & Technorati search on our TAFE to demonstrate this is where the action is…

Slide 3

Slide 2

Slide 1

Today was presentation day for my veLearning project.  Included much of the stuff below in an abbreviated form, together with a ZohoShow presentation, which will hopefully embed here.  Found that it got a bit clunky, so one needs peristence & a lot of time to get it to work properly- will no doubt improve over time.

Been a worthwhile exercise.  Had an email from Val Evans, there are another two surveys waiting from others, & Robyn wants me to have a look at another LMS exercise – & I still have to continue with this project to see how things go.  Ain’t over yet by a long shot !

As an indication of the clunkiness of Zoho at this stage, I am supposed to be able to save it as HTML – it won’t, & I am supposed to be able to embed it within my blog.  Here is the attempt, with the same error message.  Good ideas, hopefully bugs will be ironed out.

<iframe src=”http://show.zoho.com/ViewURL.sas?USER=bradley_jones&DOC=Brad&apos;s_veLearning_project&IFRAME=yes” height=’300′ width=’400′ name=”Brad’s veLearning project” scrolling=no frameBorder=’0′ ></iframe>

So I’d best load in the presentation an image at a time – will be a bit more interesting than more text…

Theoretically the formal part of the project comes to an end, though I am sure it will continue for a while yet.

A few thoughts…

Have had a better look at Wordpress blog functionality & customisability.  It looks very impressive, had I more time to spare for playing.  Have installed the plugin for Flickr, which enabled the drag /drop exercise in an earlier post.  Also made use of the Blogroll feature to add some of the blogsreferred to herein.

Would also be interested in looking at VOX in more detail.  The more you learn, the more something else interesting comes along…

The Wikispaces wiki seems to work pretty well, but is inadequate for our needs.  The formatting quirks will make it easier for someone to cause problems in there, or leave frustrated.  At present the advertising would also not be acceptable.

As suggested earlier, our own hosted wiki with our badging & increased functionality would be the go.  Anne Bartlett-Braggs suggested that Confluence http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ was a wiki “to die for”, & while I’ve never felt quite that enthusiastic (& a lot of people seem to die for a lot less), I would certainly like to give it a try.  Apparently, make the most of the plug-ins.

Thought Google Docs or Zoho Writer with multiple user access & ‘publish’ option might be another alternative for the links, but am not happy about a URL that crosses half the country.

The boss was looking at social software as a forum appropriate to meetings & issues for senior staff (IMC).  She has her concerns re the lack of security on basic blogs & wikis.  She suggested I meet with Leona Norris, formerly involved with the veLearning project http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/enrol.php?id=771 incl the eMentoring exercise, particularly in the techie side of things, including the Edna groups area.

We discussed setting up an Edna site as a secure option of IMC, & it looks quite promising.  We also discussed a heap of other stuff, including useful blogs, VOX as a blogsite (looks interesting), Elgg as an educator’s MySpace & Protopage (mentioned by Leigh Blackall last week in the elluminate session). 

Update on the outing of the Delicious exercise…

One Librarian comment liked the limited number of old style subject links.  Others quite keen on the Delicious approach, including a couple of teachers.  Will need to be properly roadtested yet, but early responses generally positive.

The negative

• I am not sure about Delicious.  I use it for my own personal use but find the list of tags for Hort a bit long.  It is a good way to keep the links current providing people actually check them. It is probably organised differently to the way I have set up our links for Hort.  I quite like the way you have organised your links on the Bremer library site. I am going to reduce ours down to just the very basics.

The others 

• I’m interested in your progress with this project too. Would you mind adding me to your list, please?
• Hi Brad – this is great! I would prefer further bundling – eg Weeds; Landscaping; Poisons; Plant ID; Weather; …would like to reproduce it for the Furnishings SPIG.
• Just read this briefly and think that the concept is a very good idea that perhaps we can work on for our other subject areas also.
• Brad has done a good job to bring this together and has given us an avenue around our internet access problems. I agree … it could work for our other teams as well.
• Had a brief look at what you have done so far and it does look great. Will provide some proper feedback when I clear all of the end of year work

• Please accept feedback as ….great! I had a play and found everything good. Some people may have individual requirements, but for me it’s all good…Good on you Brad and thanks for the communication.

• Fantastic…I have a dream…… Library network – TAFE Queensland…That all our links are located on this page under the broad SPIG type breakdowns – or by Departments.  It is time to try for this…

Back to Horticulture…  Spent much of the day working on the wiki, seeing how the links work out.  As with pb, I also ran into a few formatting problems with Wikispaces.  There is limited functionality as far as I can see.  My attempts to remove underlines & links kept failing to be accepted.   As an HTML novice, the easiest solution was to clear the section & format it in Word, then cut & paste.  It worked, but I am concerned that attempts at changes could result in unintended consequences.

As noted earlier, had a request to join in an Elluminate focus group session on social software for Val’s project.  This ran last Friday, 1st December.  Quite enjoyed it – around 15 of us from all over, including the Pilbara, Sydney & New Zealand, including Anne Bartlett-Bragg & Leigh Blackall.  Have included the relevant blogs in the blogroll. Another example of the collaborative side. 

Others were astounded at the extent of IT lockdowns on our system. 

Hopefully made some positive contribution…

Murray did the first presentation yesterday.  He was the teacher that I helped out that I referred to in the second post.  Impressive presentation…plus some very nice words for the library.  Encouraging.

I have to do a presentation on this project next week.  Late yesterday - Tues 28th Nov – I sent an email out to the Hort SPIG & teachers, as well as Library contacts, to test the water with the Del.icio.us weblinks, rough though they may be.  Some feedback already, we’ll see how we go from here…

We seem to be spending a considerable amount of time looking at the educational use of social software, with eLearning being urged on by our most Senior Departmental staff.   At the management end I suspect that there is minimal, if any, use of such software.  Yet the corporates, from some reports, are playing with blogs & wikis etc.

The earlier attempt at a Del.icio.us account for our library was not specifically educational in intent, but administrative.  Such a common weblinks approach could easily be duplicated in any admin area of the organisation.  And our Director-General’s message comes by email – why not blog ?

From an email exchange with Val Evans I made this point We also keep looking at the teaching opportunities. These will get nowhere unless they are also effectively used by the educational administrators themselves i.e. at the top end, on the corporate side.”   Her response: “absolutely agree and your point is definitely backing up some of our early findings. Two great examples of social software being modelled … is its use at a project management level by the  eLearning Creative Community Partnership project managers and NSW LearnScope. Check their stories out at http://elearnala.wikispaces.com/research and http://nswlearnscope.wikispaces.com/research  respectively. By being modelled at this level we can see it being used by projects under their umbrellas and then at the next level with students at the frontline. Some great stories coming through demonstrating this at all three levels. How to get senior managers to use it is another challenge but we are also finding great stories of that happening in corporations external to VTE – check out Nigel Paine’s story of its use with the BBC through a http://www.datarchive.co.uk/dpx_demo2/dpx.php?cmd=autoplay&type=autofocus&pres=2255&media=wm&dpxuser=ambient

I was very impressed with Nigel’s presentation !

So lets look right across the organisation !

I read an interesting contrarian style article on the collaboration side of social software, “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”  by Jaron Larnier at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html .  Also have a look at the responses. 

Yes, I suspect the dabate has been pushing the benefits of the collaborative side of things somewhat, & Wikipedia has been a spectacularly visible example of what might be achieved. 

But I know people are not necessarily all that collaborative.  My experience with collaborative efforts is that contributions are often patchy & subject to personal politics.  Sometimes the collaboration works, sometimes it presents us with the camel that is the horse designed by a committee.

And I also know that a lot of my use of social software is not for sharing, but quite selfish.  Some of my Flickr shots are private, as are some of my Del.icio.us & FURL weblinks.  Other times they are available to all the world to see.  Irrespective, most software has capabilities to limit who gets involved & how.

Perhaps we need to focus less on what the higher end collaboration is capable of & look at the full spectrum, from selfish individual use to limited access, limited comments, memberships etc.  In an educational setting, as with the corporate sector, what is sought is collaboration within an organisation rather than putting stuff out there for the world to get involved.