An afternoon with social software

  

Bryan is Gorges?Originally uploaded by jfadden.

We started talking about how to find socially produced content. This was the lead into the RSS topic…

Tailrank.com is a good source of current events from multiple perspectives.

RSS an explanation from BA -

• a web site produces an xml file
• a rss reader turns the xml file into a readable format

The combination of the rss and an rss reader allows a user to create their own internet based newspaper.

Done blogging as we are jumping from Bloglines, Google Reader (which is better than I remember), del.icio.us and flickr. 

Examples of Social Software to Go Back To…

We are only 15 minutes into today’s workshop and the ideas are already flowing.

Some projects to return to…

• Mt. Holyoke Women’s study Project…
• NITLE Arab and Culture Blog…
• Coe College’s e-Portfolio
• Allegheny’s Study abroad blog http://studyabroad.allegheny.edu.
• ning and pipes – web2.0 tools to build other web2.0 applications.
• Techcrunch – http://www.techcrunch.com/
• robot text – text file that blocks search engines from crawling your site.
• Examples of Web 2.0 in use for education – http://wiki.academiccommons.org/wiki/Examples_of_Web_2_0_in_use
  (http://del.icio.us/tag/BloggingAcademicExamples)
• Centinary Admissions student life blog -

Covering some ground with blogs – a website that is micro content arranged in reverse chronological order. Blogs are incredibly diverse and cover a range of topics. Blogs rely on hosting but attempt to take away the other technology required to develop a web site. Google rewards multiple links so if you are searching on Google you are most likely reading blogs.

A few questions of what are the most appropriate structures of a blogging assignment and what are .

• Should posting excerises be of opinion or of process?
• What is the balance of out of class publishing and inclass discussions.
• How does one resolve Personal/Privacy issues of requiring blog postings.
• how does one rethink the way we create/evaluater writing assignments when assigned to be completed on a blog. (how to push past regurgitation to thinking about the topic in a new way and expressing one’s thoughts on a topic in a personal way.)
• how can a course blog and student blogs develop a learning community
• where/how does plagarism come into play?

Definitions -

• Blogroll – the link list that shows the social network of the blog.
• Categories – organization structure of a blog that can be thought of as folders or sections to store related posts.
• Trackback – a bad name for link generated when one comments on your blog externally on ones own blog (is that clear as mud?)

Moving on to Wikis

“wikis are no longer interesting technologically” – B.A. (This does not mean that wiki projects are not interesting.)

The social process of wikis is not generally predictable but vandalism is not normally a problem as the history/restore option easily corrects

Wikis are differentiated from blogs as wikis are about the content where as blogs tie content to the author and time of post.

Ideas for wiki use in classroom

• follow the discussion of a wikipedia entry over the course of a semester – a great exercise of social knowledge creation…
• muddiest point
• create a small encyclopedia on topic of investigation
• comparison of entries on wikipedia, citizendium, etc..

Use of social software in educaiton is a natural fit for liberal arts colleges as our ethos is one that believes undergraduates can add to the body of knowledge. -> How true is this thought?

Finding stuff

• Google blog search is good for finding bloggers.
• Technorati is for finding blog posts, blogs, and tagged content of the social web.
• Ice Rocket

Wired Campus Blog: A History Department Limits Use of Wikipedia

Troubling -

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: A History Department Limits Use of Wikipedia

This is not to say that I believe Wikipedia is or an encyclopedia should carry the weight of a peer reviewed article or a first hand artifact from an expert.

What troubles me is:

• impact of this news/precedent will carry in the hands of the uninformed.
• the fact that it is even necessary
• opportunity lost

We are fortunated that it happened because: 

• it opens the doors for conversations.
  

Would this be a creative and acceptable use of Wikipedia?

What if instead of barring Wikipedia’s was used as part of the research assignment? A student would was to choose a topic, review the Wikipedia entry as a starting point, research the shortcomings, and ‘continue the dialog’ of research and publishing through the Wikipedia community?

Not only would the understanding of the topic be fostered in the student, research/information evaluation and communication would be a real experience (I can’t remember the last time my boss asked for a twenty page research paper) and the student would be connected to other with an interest in the field as they challenge, defend, explain, refine, and revise their understanding.