flickrvision (beta)

In last week’s Learning 2.0 assignment we were to look at Flickr and Youtube.

In particular, I spent some time looking at the mass-ups for Flickr. I really like the trading card option that Susan mentioned over at Parlance. I also like the mashing of flickr and google maps at flickrvision even though I really have no idea how it can relate to the world of education. But I must admit after learning about flickrvision at a NITLE workshop, I have returned to the site to watch the images pop out of an ever refocusing map. It is almost as exciting as twittervision.

If you are not a flickr person yet I would encourage you to consider it for sharing your photos with family and friends. These are some features that I like as they add to the experience…

• ability to protect photos to be viewed only by select folks
• calendar view of images
• Ability to add comments and notes
• the “blog this feature” where you can write about an image in your blog
• I also like the map feature but am a little leary of using it for all of my pictures

There are others that I am forgetting but bottom line is I recommend flickr.

Benefits of Google Reader as a News Aggregator

Until recently I used Bloglines exclusively to read updates from around the web. Two weeks ago, I was introduced to Google Reader which has been improved from when I looked at it before settling on Bloglines.

At first, I was not happy with the speed as it was noticeably slower that Bloglines but as time progressed, I found many benefits of Google Reader including…

• Tags – The ability to organize posts by keywords seemed silly at first because to this point I was thinking of the posts like newspaper articles where I read once and moved on. If I really cared about the post I would tag it to delicious which was nice but an extra step of having to surf out to the site and then do the delicious thing. Now I can apply tags within google reader which takes less time and allows quicker retrieval.
• Share – For each post you are able to easily share the post with others simply by clicking an icon (unshare is just as simple). By default you have a ‘Reading List‘ that is made public automatically with the first post you choose to share. This list can be shared as a web page, rss feed, email, or widget.
  
• Reading Lists based on tags – Through the manage subscriptions link on the Tags tab I found this handy option if you have a need to share resources you find with others. (What I really like is the ‘others’ need little knowledge of social software and related technologies to take advantage of this feature.) If you are already tagging your posts then you are half way there.
  
  As you can see you can make all posts with a given tag public and then share those posts via web page, email link or widget on one of your web pages.
• Views – not nearly as cool as the features mentioned about but depending on personal preference you can choose to read incoming posts through the Expanded View or select List View to only see the headlines. I have been switching back and forth between these views based on the other things going on that day.

Add to Google Homepage

Working on New Topics for Learning Web 2.0 by Diving In

Need to get a few more topics for Learning Web 2.0 by Diving In done so participants can keep moving along.

Topics that need activities.

• Copyright and Creative Commons – June 11 – 17
• The Desktop Moves Online – June 18 – July 1(more)
• More Things – July 2 – 15 (more)
• Online Databases and Searches – July 16 – 22 (Don)
• Podcasting and Audiobooks – July 23 – August 5 (Cynthia and I)
• Bibliography Tools – August 6 – 12
• Wikis – August 13 – 19 (more)

The Desktop Moves Online

• Google Docs,

More Things

• Google Gears (Thanks Laura)
• Yahoo Pipes
• Ustream.tv
• Twitter
• Mashups – twittervision, flickrvision, wikimapia

Wikis

• Wikipedia
• NITLE Workshop Wiki
• Special projects Wiki?
• PMWiki

spreading tree at Scripps College

 

spreading tree at Scripps CollegeOriginally uploaded by BryanAlexander.

Bryan is talking about flickr in the workshop right now so I thought it would be cool to post one of his pictures to my blog.

I also agree that this looks like the Six Feet Under tree.

Coverage of the Emerging Technology Workshop

Currently, folks are introducing themselves giving a general sense of what people hope to learn. 

One thing I am am hoping to learn is about the mobile computing topic that Bryan will focus on a good bit this morning. 

Bryan – references his slides on slideshare.

What is emerging is not necessarily new.  Often the emergence is a new use of a proven technology – example of a bank that incorporated wiki into daily work in 1998.  (Delta Principle) Thus emerging technology is determined by people when they apply the technology to a problem.

Intro to Web 2.0 (Wiki Notes)

Bryan is using Slideshare as his presentation tool.  It is quite obvious that he has many presentations.  Slideshare seems to allow him to have multiple presentations available at his finger tips.  – Could be an interesting option for presenting workshops/conference presentations or even multi section courses?

Agreeable points of Web 2.0

• There was a web before last year
• Focus on micro content both in terms of size and usage
• multiply authored rather that omnicient webmasters. 
• sense of openness (Openness + Multiple authors = network constructivism)
• Data mashups (the retooling of data from multiple sources into new media/tool)
• always in a state of continual development now release cycle. 

Currently, we are talking about the openness of web 2.0.  I think I use reusability to define what we are talking about.  Also the “languages” of web 2.0 – images and text – are pretty universal these days. 

Back from break and working on tags and folksonomies…both relate to how users organize their stuff on web 2.0 … Museums are redesigning exhibits at museums based on tagging.  Visit Steve project…

Sounds like we are moving to Rich Media and Web 2.0 – Nope we jumped to Pedagogies…

• web 1.0 – Hypertext, web audience, discussion forum, collaborative document authoring,
• web 2.0 – journaling, media literacy, lms are moving toward this, distributive conversation (loosely joined conversation), collaborative writing, object oriented class discussions. 
• These are taking off with web 2.0 because of ease of entry and personalization… 

jumping from pedagogy to storytelling…

from storytelling to net.gen

from net.gen to Gaming…

• cultural presence – average age is over 30years old, both genders play games,
• interface design is being influenced by gaming
• machinima – video from 3d gaming software…
• research on gaming and literacy from James Paul Gee…

What can we do with this?  We should build games as educators…

• this is costly.  so as liberal arts colleges should take advantage of current games or games produced by larger institutions…
• another possible option is mod gaming (modifying games for their personal goals) MIT built a game to teach the american revolution …
• another level is information literacy… take a look at food force World Food Programme from the UN in 2003. 
• how does one assess this game (media literacy) viewing games through a critical lense of society, politics, etc…

Were back for the afternoon after a good lunch and great conversation (thanks Sahifq, Jackie, Tom)

A little about mobile computing -

All that is true about web 2.0 is truer when done in a mobile network environment.

Interesting point on US vs World – We don’t view our phones as computers – this must be related to the quality of our LAN and availability of computers.

Pedagogies of mobility – lessons from Europe and Japan

• Spatial Mapping
• Swarming
• mobile devises for research

interesting site to check out – flickrvision.com

Moving on to Podcasting -

How do we find podcasts?  (the search tools just aren’t there yet)

Historical background?  – took off 3 years ago because of ease of production and timeshifting nature. 

Del.icio.us – for: tag…

This week’s assignment for Learning Web 2.0 by Diving – Describe a feature of del.icio.us not covered in the tasks.

One particular feature of del.icio.us that I use quite a bit is the for: tag.   The for: tag allows users to send a particular resource to another user’s attention.  All you need to know is a person’s username and you can share web pages more efficiently than emailing link’s in my opinion.

Links that are shared with you are organized on a page where you can choose whether to save or delete the suggested bookmark.  This page is available through the links for you link which is at the top of the page when you are signed on to your account.  When you choose to save a resource you can add your own tags, add a description, and even choose to keep the bookmark private.

I like this option as when working on a project with another person I can send (and receive)  of resources as they are discovered and they are organized in one space.  As opposed to email which spreads the links across emails, even if you include a day’s worth of links in one email and puts extra steps between you and the resources.

My del.icio.us username is jfadden feel free to add me to your network.

Old Post New Value

So today as I was reviewing where in the process of learning Web 2.0 I should be at, I  realized that we will be turning our attention next to RSS.  As I agree with Jeff VanDrimmelen that RSS is as cool as sliced bread, I have posted on RSS previously in preparations for a workshop I went through some old posts on RSS and found that some will have value for the Learning 2.0 project.   One such post is my explanation of RSS post. Not that the post is any more insightful or better written than the one included on the plcmclearing2.0 blog.   But it is my thoughts wrapped around quotes from other posts with links to articles that produced much thought at the time of the post.

The two things that are powerful to me because of this post are:

1.  The ease of reusing ‘old’ content to capture new thoughts or share with colleagues by adding/reassigning a category to a post.

2. The value of reviewing your thoughts and amending/appending them as topics regain my attention. This is of particular import when blogging as you capture your thoughts as snap shots in time in a very public setting.  By reflecting on and responding to old posts one is able to communicate new and hopefully deeper understanding over time as a tapestry of expertise instead of unrelated strands of thought.

Linklog Love -

I wanted to take a few minutes and bring your attention to a really nice feature from del.icio.us.

I had gotten into the bad habit of tagging resources in del.icio.us and not taking the time to look at the resource beyond what was necessary to deem the resource worthy of tagging.  I think the habit started when I was trying to do too many things at once and I thought I would go back and read the resources later.  But I never did.

Then I found out about:

Linklog – Save bookmarks to interesting websites and add a bit of commentary to create a lightweight linklog. Then, use linkrolls or the daily blog posting feature to include your del.icio.us bookmarks on your blog or website. (learn more about other del.icio.us tools at del.icio.us/about)

Well more specifically the daily blog post.  This allows del.icio.us to talk to my blog and create posts that include my bookmarks from the previous day.  I have found that this not only provides me the chance to look at the resources I bookmarked yesterday but it posts them within the thoughts I was having at the time I tagged the resource.

I liked it so much that I incorporated it into my department’s web site to share links on educational technology.

Get a Blog of Your Own, An Excerise for Learning 2.0 by Diving In.

This week at Learning Web 2.0 by Diving In we are to Get a Blog of Our Own and post something about ourselves to it by sharing something about my life online.

Most of my life online starts with Bloglines which is actually my homepage.  It is how I learn about the latest antics in Dilbert’s world, news from my favorite sports team, stories from family and friends, and interesting ideas from people in higher education and instructional technology.  It is my own little news paper populated with the topics and sources I find most interesting.

The rest of my life online is focused on sharing my real life with family and friends spread through out the country.  Flickr is a great tool for sharing pictures and memories.  It is easy – really it is my aunts and other digital immigrants (that’s for your Susan) are regulars and even applying for citizenship.  Flickr extends itself well into the world of blogging which lets me and my wife easily create blog entries on Blogger that include pictures of our kids doing funny things so grandmas and grandpas can read about the funny things that kids do.  It also gives us ammunition for when they are teenagers and need to remind them that they used to like us and each other.

The focus on using the web to keep connected with my people is really how I use the web.  As new services become available I choose to use based on how well it allows me to connect to the people I care about.

An honorable dilemma at The Fish Wrapper

A very interesting dilemma for sure is explained over at The Fish Wrapper. On a much smaller scale I felt a similar clash/disconnect between my preferred writing format blog/html and the universally accepted format of paper in completing my annual performance review this year.

I formed my ideas for what I would submit using my blog and quite naturally(or absent-mindedly) included links to many of the completed projects. As I moved from blog entry(ies) to a more print friendly media I came to a rather annoying realization that a flat piece of paper is not nearly as communicative as my entries. Not to mention the loss of context when the summary post was read without the supporting posts written throughout the year.

After reading this post I wonder if our students have similar reactions when moving between courses that are rich in Web 2.0 tools/practices and ones that require more traditional approach?
Would it make sense for the university archivists and historians to have a dedicated web server that could store such works publicly but not provide write access thus having a true archive of the work as it was conceived and orginially shared. As Martha says “I am not a librarian”, archivist, etc.. but that on the surface that makes sense to me.

I think I will bring this up at our RefIT group (a weekly meeting of Reference Librarians and Instructional Technologists) to see what ideas come from it. Hopefully our Learning Web 2.0 project will also benefit from this example as it is a concrete example of how Web 2.0 and user created content impacts both of our worlds.
This is a problem that more will face as the educational trend seems to be one that includes more user created content. Particularly in mediums that do not seem to be easily ’shelfable’ as is paper, video tape or dvd, photograph, or work of art.