Week 6 prompt

How do issues such as authorship, copyright and open access impact your desire, ability and willingness to engage in produsage, both personally and professionally?

Wow! The six week intense class is going to finish so soon. By this class, I have tried many Web 2.0 technologies, Twitter, Facebook, Diigo, Flickr, Youtube, Technorati, Citeulike, Delicious, etc. Some of them I have been very familiar with, some of them I have heard but never have a chance to try, and some of them I have just learned from this class. There are so many useful tools and functions that I would definitely keep using them in the future. For example, I often use Youtube to search tutorials to learn new technologies and its features. Citeulike is a novel tool for me, but I know I will use it from now on as a PhD student to help me collect academic articles and search and expand the research topics I’m interested in. Flickr can be not only a simple photo sharing website but also a visual learning tool that could enable a community to discuss and exchange ideas through one or a series of specific photos.

Also, I have been very familiar with Blogs and Wikis, and will keep use them to collect my personal ideas (in personal and professional fields) and use wikis with classmates to collaborate group projects.

Although I believe those innovative technologies could be used to enhance learning experience, there are so many approaches and applications that I have never thought about that before. For example, an instructor can use Twitter as a means to communicate students and parents, and incorporate Twitter into the course to facilitate collaborative learning. One of the characteristics of Web 2.0 tools is information sharing. I think this can be exploited to provide a platform for feedback from peers, instructors, or a community of practices. However, no matter what technologies you, as an instructional designer, will use, the most important thing is how you can incorporate them to increase motivation and promote learning.

Week 6- a podcasting research

Lee, M.J.W., McLoughlin, C. & Chan, A. (2008). Talk the talk: learner generated podcasts as catalysts for knowledge creation. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(3), 501-521.


Podcasting is a kind of Web 2.0 technologies, although we did not talk much in this Web 2.0 class. It refers to the method of distributing multimedia files and releasing files to the Internet. Most people claim the term is from a combination of iPod and broadcasting. This new technology combines the strength of blogging with digital media (audio, video) technology to present multimedia content. With RSS feed feature, subscribers can receive new podcasts instantly and automatically.

Mostly, podcasting has been used in education to deliver learning materials, which are frequently created by instructors, such as audio/video recordings of lectures, supplementary materials, guest speaker’s talks. A relatively few researches show the learning effects on learner-generated podcasts. Lee, McLoughlin, and Chan’s (2008) study is one of the research that asking students to create learning content podcasts in education.

Lee, McLoughlin, and Chan (2008) argued that learner-generated content enables learners to engage more and deeper in the learning context by build and organize knowledge rather than passively receiving learning materials. Hence, they applied a quantitative approach to explore the learning outcomes of podcasting created by groups of students. In their study, students were required to re-think and synthesize the knowledge they acquired in the coursework through the podcast production process. The result of the study found the evidence of knowledge building and of student engagement with collaborative learning, and this approach fosters learners’ control and ownership of their learning and of the technology.
The concept of learner-generated content reminds me that we have also employed this idea in our produsage creations. We also need to reflect what we have learned from our experience and apply the idea into our produsage assignment. Through these two produsage assignments, I did learn a lot from Yoon Jeon and XinRong by discussing and sharing our ideas. In addition, I think Web 2.0 technologies provides many features that enable users/ learners to create content, and it is a useful learning approach that should be advocated and employed in education for a better learning performance.

Week 5 - teaching and learning in Second Life

I recalled last year when I attended AECT conference, there were a lot of researches exploring the potential applications of Second Life. Second Life seems the most popular virtual world in use today. With its real time/ synchronous characteristics, you can participate in a live event, conference, concerts, etc. Second Life can be use as a means to enhance learning and increase learner motivation. For example use Second Life to create and design situated learning environments, support immersive learning, increase social networking and interaction, and facilitate communication and collaborative learning. In such immersive learning environments, learners can experience real feelings and interaction as they do in a real world and apply knowledge and skills in realistic scenarios. Shy learners are more apt to participate in such attractive learning environments.

The researchers also pointed out some barriers and difficulty. For example, users ( i.e., learners, instructors, instructional designers) may have technological problems or encounter difficulty using the interface of Second Life. Also, it is expensive and time-consuming for instructors or instructional designers to design a virtual world. How to effectively integrate Second Life to support learning and improve performance/ learning is still challenging for instructional designers and instructors.

I also found some wiki websites and blogs about the use of Second Life in education.

• Exploring the educational uses of Second Life.

• Second Life Education Wiki

• Simon Bignell's blog talked about how to assess the impact of Second Life for educational purposes

Week 5 prompt

How do issues such as authorship, copyright and open access impact your desire, ability and willingness to engage in produsage, both personally and professionally?

I don't think that copyright and authorship would have a huge impact on my desire or willingness to engage in produsage in my personal or professional field.
What I post in my personal blogs only allows my particular to see, and most of my posts are just my rambling thoughts. I rarely posted something on Twitter and Facebook, so I don't need to worry any copyright issue so much on there. However, the photos I have placed on Flickr and Google Photo have started to get me worried about copyright issues. Because a personal photo that was shared by one of my friends in a photo sharing website was misused and edited without her consent or permission or noticed and had been remixed and re-uploaded to a travel agency website. One friend accidentally went to this website and found this situation. Subsequently the photo was removed from the site after my friend emailed the website and complain the issue. After this thing happened, I still continue upload my photos to the photo sharing websites, but I set the permissions for my photos and only allow my friends and family to access them.

In my professional field, I would very carefully cite and quote all reference materials as I do in writing papers. On the other hand, I also concern the authorship and copyright issue. I can understand and appreciate the danger that lies in the world wide web. It is relatively easy to use photos or online content without permission. It is hardly possible to prevent from every single illegal use or distribution in a virtual environment. I may not be able to check if someone copy my writing or misuse my photos. Hence, my attitude toward online postings is cautious optimism. I will still be encouraged to share my thoughts and views on public forums and blogs but will refrain posting private photos and contents. In addition, I would kindly remind them to be sure to cite the resource and add watermark to protect the images if needed.

Week 5 - a predictive technology

Recently, I read an article " The Web Knows What You Want" from Business Week By Stephen Baker.

Corporates want to know the customer's behaviors for online shopping businesses, so that after a shopper look at/ buy a particular item, the system can appear a recommendation that is precisely what the shopper wants. That's just like a sale clerk could give customers recommendations through observing customer's body language and behaviors in a brick-and-mortar store. This is not a new idea, but they want to adopt a new predictive technology in order to improve the accuracy of recommendations and to earn more money. For example, when I look at or add a camera into my shopping cart at Amazon, it would suggest me to buy related accessories and recommend me what other customers who bought this same item also bought. Every time I log in to my account,Amazon will offer personalized product recommendations to me.

The patterns of clicks, purchases, personal information are analyzed, and many other factors may influence an individual's selection. Also, privacy issues may cause some concern to some online shoppers. However, I have more positive attitudes towards this predictive technology. I'm thinking how time saving this will be and what related terms this will show, if I'm searching information on an online library database. At least from a researcher or a student's point of view, this technology could lead me to dig deeper into more research topics relevant to the field of interest.

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.