Brad’s Ve-learning project

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.