Week 4 CiteULike and delicious

This week, I have tried to play with CiteULike and delicious. Similar to Diigo, Delicious.com and CiteULike are also social bookmarking tools.

I can see the most popular bookmarks on Delicious's home page. Hence, I can see what other people are most interested currently. It's also very convenient to save the links listed on the first page as my personal bookmark. But unlike Diigo, delicious can't add Sticky Notes or highlight information on a web page.

CiteULike doesn't have that annotation features as Diigo, either. But I think one of the advantage of CiteULike is that it has a citation management feature. I can choose different citation formats and see the abstracts of the articles. This is more useful for researchers, who need to collect academic articles, cite reference, and write papers. I can see other people's bookmarks and tags on the CiteULike's home page. Through other people's bookmarks, I can even connect to ERIC database to find more relative articles that I may be interested in. I feel CiteULike will be beneficial for me because of its citation management features and I still need to explose it more.

An introduction to CiteULike, CiteULike: a researcher's social bookmarking service (Emamy & Cameron, in Ariadne) .

Week 4 prompt

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

Actually, there is no big difference for me to judge the expertise between on the Web and in face-to-face settings. I respect people’s thoughts and comments on the Web and what they say in face-to-face settings, and try to keep my mind open to things that I don’t know or understand.

If there is a new term that I don’t know, I would check several resources that I obtain from Google search. I may go to the more reliable websites to cross-check information. If that is an ordinary, general question, then I may take less time to check and find out the information. Basically, that kind of information just for my personal reference and won’t affect my professional performance; hence, I may not check the authors’ background information.

If I’m looking for something that is related to more professional field, in addition to cross-checking different sources of information, I will need to check authors’ educational background, the amount of experience the authors have in the related area. For example, if I need to cite or quote the information, I would try to seek for the academic articles that have been peer-reviewed and published.

Basically, I have my own standard of judgment and value system, and I think I value the expertise based on my own beliefs and value system , and I keep my judgment consistent no matter on the Web or in face-to-face settings.

Week 4 -Technorati

Technorati is a blog search engine. It can help me find information appearing on blogs. For being a beginner, I can check what the popular topics and most linked blogs are from their top 100 blogs. Also, I can collect a list of my favorite blogs and keep track on them.

But I think Technorati is more beneficial if you are a blogger and want to make your blog more visible. Especially if someone is making a living on blogging or enterprise blogs, Technorati would be definitely useful for them.

It seems that Technoratic can help blog owners to find out who is linking to their blogs, no matter what blogging platforms they use. It also offers some useful features, such as tagging (I know some blog platforms do not allow multiple tags) and ping, which notice and update Technoratic that there is new content on the blog.

Second, building authority is important for bloggers, because that the higher numbers means the more blogs linking to your blog. Technorati Authority measures the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So if a blog owner writes some things that are interesting or important that many other blogs link to there, that blog would have a high authority number and it may shows on Technorati Rank.

Right now I’ve just sign up, claimed my blog, and added the Technorati logo on my blog. But I think I just need it to check any update from my favorite blogs, and perhaps someday I will need it to manage my blog if I’ll start to write something that I want more people to read.

There are two resources about Technorati.
This is from Gina Chen, who talked about why journalist bloggers should use it.
This one is about A Beginner’s guide to Technorati.

Week 3 Participation

What I did for Week 3:

• Finish my produsage assignment
• Post at least 3 posts my own blog
• Participated on the discussion board
• Read the Bruns chapters
• Got myself familiar with Searchme.com
• Read and commented on classmates' blogs
• Briefly looked at classmates' posted produsage assignments

Week 3 - Web 2.0 tool - Searchme.com

This week I found an interesting tool called Searchme. It is a search engine, but I would think it is more like a visual bookmark tool.

Searchme shows the search results as a stack of pages and it also allow users to preview and flip through the pages. Unlike traditional search engine shows you a list of text-based results, Searchme shows screenshots of web pages.

Searchme is not as simple as a search engine, it also offers a bookmark feature. The stacks features on the top right corner of the page can let users to organize collections of bookmarked pages. Users can create several stacks, and it can contain not only bookmarked pages but also images and videos. Users can also manually add URL to or delete any page from the stack. Also, the collections of bookmarked pages can be shared via email, blogs, or social networking sites.

This new verson of search engine helps users save time filtering through search results by view the screenshots of websites. I can imagine that enterprises will consider to design more appealing and good looking websites in order to draw visitors.

So how to use Searchme's stacks feature? You can check out this tutorial on Youtube.

Week 3 - Use of Twitter in K-12

Ok, I have known what Twitter is and also have an Twitter account before taking this Web 2.0 course. But I have never thought that Twitter may be used for Education.

First, Twitter can serve as a real time communication tool. In education, it can be used for announcements/ updates of learning activities and reminders of homework. Also, teachers can use Twitter to share classroom information with parents as Aditya Joshi suggested, and Eirin Lombardo suggested, on the other hand, that parents quickly communicate with teachers about absence excuses.

Second, Twitter limits 140 characters per post (tweet), so the information on tweets must be more concise, targeted, and relevant on a particular topic. Hence, it makes students to think more carefully with each word they write. In addition, in education, Twitter can be used as a collaborative tool, so students work together as small groups to share information and comments. Teachers can also provide comments and feedback on students' group projects.

Moreover, Twitter can be incorporated into other Web 2.0 tools, and also used on the iPhone as Lea Gates mentioned. That makes Twitter more usable and much more accessible.

Currently, I only use Twitter to follow certain topics or celebrities I'm interested in. But I believe that Twitter has incredible potential in education.

As Sri Wahyuni provided an article on 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom. There are also tips and applications about Twitter to use in Education. 100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter.

Week 3 prompt

What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

I have been using wikis for a while. Wikis are a great tool for collaborative learning, and I use it to share information with my teams when doing group assignments. It is a easy-to-use tool as a word processer, and also allows each team member to add and edit the content any time if needed. Normally, my group members meet face-to-face at least once and then split up the assignment into different parts. Each one works on each part individually, but we all can see others' inputs on the same wiki page. Once we find any related reference and resources, we can upload the documents or add a hyperlink to the wiki page, and everyone can access them and refer to them as necessary thereafter. Sometimes we use the discussion board embedded in the Wikis system to leave messages to others or to comment a particular topic, and we use it as an alternative way to communicate with our team.

In a work environment, if management tries to use a wiki, then they firstly need to get everyone familiar with the wiki. Although wikis are easy to use, you cannot assume that everyone knows how to use a wiki without any training when implementing this design. Besides the technique issue, employees need to know the purpose of this wiki task. Management must make everyone feel comfortable and therefore willing to contribute to this task. In addition, the security issue may need to be considered when using wikis in a work environment.

Ideally, in my opinion, wikis can be used a great tool for project management and knowledge management. Employees can share their experience and resources with others. However, some information is not appropriate to be seen by anyone outside of the company or outside of the team. I’m not sure if there is a private wiki that only specific members can see and edit and is also hidden from public.

Week 2 Participation

What I did for Week 2:

• Posted at least 4 posts to my blog
• Participated on the discussion boards
• Read and commented on classmates’ blogs
• Read the Bruns chapters
• Tried to get familiar myself with Diigo and Flickr.

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins

Shared via AddThis

Recently, there are some debate about which search engine is better. Google or Microsoft's Bing. I personally still prefer Google. If you are struggling with choosing one of them, you can try the below website and compare their results.

http://www.bing-vs-google.com/

Web 2.0 tool - Diigo

This week (week 2) I took some time to get myself familiar with Diigo. Diigo is a social bookmarking Web 2.0 tool.

Diigo is a useful tool for managing your personal bookmarks and is easy to share the bookmarks with your friends. Its key features that makes it different from other Web 2.o tools is that it allows a user to highlight the information on the Web and add notes or comments for the select text on the Web. Since people often find information on the Internet, Diigo could save time in searching and sorting information that a user has found before, because Diigo could allow a user to add tags to a website.

Before I played around with Diigo, I've aready known Diigo's strong features. However, I'm a little bit disappointed in it. Because I was expecting that I can use those features through its Web-based interface as I use other Web 2.0 tools. In order to use the highlighting and Sticky Notes features, I need to download an extra tool. I don't like to install any extension or toolbar on my computer, unless I believe I really need it.

Consequently, I have not installed it. Diigo for me is just a web-based bookmaking tool. I can add tags and share my bookmarks with my friends.

Tutorials from Diigo Help Center.
I also found the following useful tutorials about Diigo from Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX8d701nzsk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcecBgRd3ig&watch_response

Links regarding Open source

Open Source Initiative. Open source software's source code is freely available. However, besides this main purpose, open source also need to comply with some other criteria, such as Free Redistribution, allow modifications and derived works, No Discrimination, Distribution of License, and etc. See the definition here.

The definition and information for open source on Wikipedia.

Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards. This is for people who contribute to open source.

http://www.osalt.com/
and http://sourceforge.net/
These websites help find open source software alternatives to commercial software

http://www.opensourcemac.org/
This website provides a list of free, open source software for Mac user.

W3C Open Source Software
http://www.w3.org/Status

Week 2 prompt

How might the concept of produsage be applied in your life (personal and/or professional) as it stands today? Are you already a produser? If yes, what do you do? If no, why not?

From the readings of Bruns’s book, a producser is a productive user, who actively engaged in the act of produsage. The concept of produsage refers to something, in contrast to a traditional format, that is related to continuing content production, collaboration, technology integration, remix / reuse of existing and new information, mutual communication, and etc.

For my personal life, I like to upload my photos and video and write my thoughts to share with my friends via my MSN spaces. I would also check my friends’ updates from facebook or their blogs and leave comments to them. Also, my friends check my life in the US and leave me comments. I enjoy communicating with them through these ways. Sometimes, I share interesting videos, news, or articles that I found from the Internet with my friends, and I would add my comments and feedback about that information. I also actively provide information and share my experience to the Taiwanese Students Website. Hence, I would say I am a prduser, and the concept of produsage has been applied in my life. Through the Internet to communicate to my family and friends has become the most frequently used method nowadays.

For my professional, I am more a user rather than an active produser. I have some experience in using wikispaces to do assignments with classmates. I also read postings, listen podcasts from other’s blogs and wikis, but I rarely leave comments. However, although I’m a lurker, the information I collect from those blogs do help extend my knowledge and experience.

Security issues for open source softwares

In one of the discussion board of this week, we discuss about the open source from the end user perspective.

The open source software I have used before is:

• Mozilla Firefox
• OpenOffice
• Apache Tomcat (for displaying the webpage written by Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) code)

Programs that I have heard but never tried:
Moodle, Linux, Notepad++

Software I have never heard:
Ubuntu, Edubuntu, Redhat, SuSE, PDF Creator, ClamWin, VLC Media Player, Audacity, Stellarium, GIMP, 7-Zip, subversion (code repository), bugzilla (bug reporting database system), SAKAI (a collaboration and courseware management platform), Gimp (great photoshop clone), Filezilla…etc.

Gina and Kent discussed about the security issue of open source. Maybe because I do not use a lot of open source software and rarely use them, I have no idea how critical and serious it is for the security of open source. However, I think this security issue impacts both open source and Closed source software. I don’t know much about the cryptography skill, and I don’t know how that influences the spread and use of open source. But I don’t think closed source software is 100% safe either. Microsoft Windows is a prevailing platform, and it is a huge target of virus attacks. In contrast, we rarely heard about a virus attack to Linux system. I do not mean to emphasize that open source is better than closed source. Actually, I rely heavily on MS Office Suite. But because of the competition from open source, that makes the closed source / “mainstream” software improved the products. Hence, I have more positive attitude to open source. Similar to Harold Stephenson‘s point of view, the open source makes the “mainstream“ software (e.g., MS Office, IE) better.

Clay Shirky's talks

A video from Ted.com
How social media can make history



2nd video is from Youtube. I saw it from Cindy's blog.


Web 2.0 applications provide opportunities for innovative approaches that can easily track friends' updates and form a social community.

An interview with Shirky that shared from Gina's contribution in Blackboard. I am very impressive with her skills and knowledge in Web 2.0 and her kindness to share.

Week 1 - 3

Discuss what you hope to get out of this class.

Besides knowing more Web 2.0 technologies and applications, I’m more interested to learn how to integrate Web 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning, and how Web 2.0 technologies influence people daily life, behaviors, and attitude. One of the characteristics of Web 2.0 is information sharing; hence, I think web 2.0 security and privacy issues are also critical at present. Therefore, I wish I will learn some Web 2.0 tools, more strategies that are suitable for Web 2.0 technologies, and more knowledge about Web 2.0 technology issues at the end of this class.

Week 1 - 2, a leader or follower?

Do you consider yourself a leader or follower in this realm, or something else altogether? Why?

I consider myself an accidental leader in web2.0 applications. I have been using web2.0 unknowingly for a few years before I was formally introduced the term. I have encouraged my family and friends to use more web2.0 application because I find the ability to share information very useful in keeping touch with them. For example, the use of MSN Space blog to record and blog about daily occurrences, as well as share latest photos, are excellent example of how I have used web2.0 widely.

Besides encouraging my family and friends to use web2.0, I also asked my best friends to test new web2.0 together with me. There was once when we tried new functions of Twitter and Plurk just to compare the difference of the layout and format. We also tried new functions of Skype and MSN video just to compare the clarity and quality of web voice and video. To me, that was a very good way of assessing and being more friends on board the web2.0 revolution.

Week 1 Participation

What I did for Week 1:

• Posted at least 4 posts to my blog
• Participated on the discussion boards
• Read and commented on classmates’ blogs
• Tried to get familiar myself with Twitter.

Week 1 -1

What have been your prior experiences with Web 2.0 technologies?

I cannot really recall when was my first encounter with web2.0 or when was the time i heard about the term Web 2.0. Maybe in Dr. Reiser’s Trends and Issues course, or earlier. However, before I knew this novel term, I have already used its technology. I have used MSN’s spaces as a web log for about 4 years. I used it as an electronic diary and share my thoughts with my friends and family. After I left my home country and came to FSU for my study, I began to increasingly write on my MSN spaces blog entries, because I want to keep records about my life in America and share them to my loved one who care about what happen to me in a foreign country. Also, I can check how my friends are doing by viewing their MSN blogs.

Unlike in America most young people using ICQ, Facebook or MySpace, in Taiwan we like to use MSN’s messenger, MSN space blog, and other social networking website to connect with friends. We can easily check friends’ MSN blogs by clicking the asterisk symbols on MSN messenger. In addition to its convenience to link to MSN blogs, I also like its permission restriction function because it allows me to select who can check my blog. This is because I didn’t wish to totally share my personal life in public to people who I don’t know. On top of MSN’s photo sharing function, I also use other web-based photo sharing websites, similar to Flickr, but they are hosted in Taiwan, and only have Chinese version platform. Initially I used them to share my trips’ photo with my friends. Increasingly, I also use them for store my family’s photos. Youtube and Myspace were used for me to upload my nephew’s videos and share to my entire family, especially to my brother, who is also overseas.

These web 2.0 technologies are useful tools for me to keep in touch with my family and friends in Taiwan. Although my family and I talk to each other via Skype every week, we still rely on using Web 2.0 technologies to share videos, photos, and life experience. It’s also very convenient to us because we don’t need to worry about the huge video/ photo file transmission problem.

Electronic Journal for Web 2.0 course

This is the electronic journal for Web 2.0-based Learning and Performance course. It is an intense course, since it has only 6 week peroid. I'm very interested in Web 2.0 topics and wish I will learn a lot from this course.