May 31, 2008
The Machine is Us/Ing Us
Posted by kurtis at 12:46 PM | web 2.0
Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
What's the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is a concept, not a technology... though a number of technologies certainly facilitate Web 2.0. In the original use of the expression by Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media), for example, he alluded to the use of XML and DHTML. What those acronyms stand for is unimportant. The important thing was that these technologies made it easy for the web to move from "sites" to "applications," with rapidly updated content, authored by anyone with a web browser.
The transformation of the web using these technologies is evident...
Web 1.0 |
Web 1.x |
Web 2.0 |
Few -> Many |
Many -> Everybody |
Everybody <-> Everybody |
Disorganized |
Taxonomy |
Folksonomy |
Static Information |
Rapidly Updated Information |
Collaboration |
Clicks |
Comments |
Creation |
Content providers and users |
User-annotated content |
User-created Content |
Hits |
Members |
Networks |
When did Web 2.0 begin?
Of course, long-time web users will protest that those notions were always in place... and that, in fact, the Internet is still not as democratic as it once was. However, few would argue that the newer technologies haven't made participation easier and for more accessible than it used to be.
- Usenet (1979)
- Dial-up Discussion Boards (1980s)
- Personal Websites (1992-1993)
- Discussion Boards (1990s)
- Blogs and Wikis (1995-1996)
- XML/XHTML (1997)
- Social Software (2002-2003)
Posted by kurtis at 11:45 AM | web 2.0
Explore UThink Blogs
UThink, "the largest academic blogging tool in North America," is maintained by the University Libraries and enables University instructors, students and staff to create, contribute to and view blogs. The purpose of this exercise is to discover some educational uses of blogs through an exploration of UThink.
Assignment
1. To go to UThink, follow this link (page will open up in another tab or window).
Two suggested ways to explore UThink blogs: 1) On the front page in the middle you'll see "Recent Entries on UThink." Click on any link to see the entry and its blog. For a preview of the entry, scroll over the entry title 2) Search UThink using the keyword of your choice (upper right corner)
2. Take a few minutes to peruse the blog. Take note of entries, comments, layout, blogrolls and categories.
3. Post a comment to this entry, including the URL of blog you read and a few words about what it is. (Click "comments" underneath this entry, in the lower right corner.)
4. Be prepared to discuss with the group any comments you have about educational uses of blogs based on your observations, or any questions you have about educational uses of blogs.
Posted by clopez at 10:08 AM
May 30, 2008
Social Bookmarking/Cataloging Activity
Overview
Social bookmarking and cataloguing include the potential for building communities that share resources and create useful sets of tags around common interests. In this exercise, you will explore a topic of relevance to you to determine what others have found worth bookmarking. To do this, you will use "tags" that represent some salient feature or characteristic of the topic.Activity
- Choose some tags.
- Decide on two or three one-word "tags" or keywords (see notes below) that you would use to describe or classify an area of interest to you. This could be an area of research, teaching, or a hobby. For example, in graduate school, I worked with some optical illusions that showed "anomalous motion"; so I might choose these as my tags: illusions, optical, and movement.
- Note: When creating tags for items you are bookmarking, choose terms that are meaningful to you, so that you can find them easily later. When searching what others have bookmarked, you will want to choose tags that are descriptive and that others are likely to have used.
- Note: If a tag needs more than one word to be meaningful (e.g., University of Minnesota), you could use a common abbreviation (UMN, UofM, etc.), use hyphens (University-of-Minnesota), run the words together (UniversityOfMinnesota), use periods (University.of.Minnesota), etc.
- Go to http://del.icio.us
- Search
- Enter your tags in the search box near the upper right of the screen, and click Search. You can search each tag alone or in combination.
- Note how many "hits" you get for each. Depending on the topic and your choice of tags, you may get many hits or few or none. If you don't get any hits, try some other tags.
- When your search delivers some items (resources), click one of the "Saved by xxx people" links. In the page that opens, you will see several features of del.icio.us. What information can you find here?
- Now click a username. You will see what else that user has saved and the tags s/he has used.
- Skim the list of tags. Are there any tags that might be useful to you? If you and that user have any shared interests, you might find some tags that you hadn't thought of originally. This is how folksonomies develop.
- When you have set up your del.icio.us space, if you find another user who seems to be looking for the same kinds of resources you are, you can add that user to your network, and all of that user's bookmarks will be available to you when you click Your Network.
- Enter your tags in the search box near the upper right of the screen, and click Search. You can search each tag alone or in combination.
- Share.
- What do you like/dislike about del.icio.us?
- How might you make use of this tool?
Posted by wilco001 at 10:20 AM | social bookmarking | social networking | web 2.0
Subscribing to a Podcast in iTunes
Blogs and podcasts make use of "RSS" (or "real simple syndication"). This allows people to have new entries delivered to them directly, just like newspapers are delivered to their doorstep. People can use desktop applications or web portals to collect (or "aggregate") their favorite blogs and podcasts. They can even have them delivered directly to their email.
iTunes can be used to subscribe to audio and video podcasts. You don't need iTunes, but it makes it easier, particularly if you are going to transfer the files to an iPod for enjoying offline. Here is how to subscribe to a podcast in iTunes.
You might want to print off these instructions before you begin!
1. Copy the "feed" to your clipboard.
a. The "feed" of this blog is http://blog.lib.umn.edu/dmc/dtw/index.xml
Select the text of the feed URL, and use your browser's Edit menu to copy the feed to your clipboard.
2. Subscribe to the "feed" in iTunes.
a. Open iTunes.
b. Go to the "Advanced" menu, and select "Subscribe to Podcast."
c. Use control-v (Windows) or apple-v (Mac) to paste the URL from step 1 into the window.
d. Click OK.
3. Listen to the podcast.
a. Click the "Podcasts" button in the left menu in iTunes.
b. Locate "Digital Teaching Workshop" in the Library window.
c. You may need to click the little triangle next to the title to open the list of available files to play.
d. Select any file and click the Play button to listen or watch it.
e. If a file is listed but is grayed out, click "Get" to retrieve the file before you play it.
4. Update the podcast.
When you return to iTunes in the future, new files will automatically be fetched. If they do not, you can follow these steps to refresh your play list.
a. Click the "Podcasts" button in the left menu in iTunes.
b. Locate "Digital Teaching Workshop" in the Library window.
c. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) and select "Update Podcast" from the popup menu.
Subscribing to other podcasts
If you are following other podcasts in UThink, look for the RSS 2.0 link in the side bar. It usually appears on the right. Do not follow the link--just right-click (Windows) or control-click (Macintosh) and select the option to copy the link from the pop-up menu. You can then proceed with step 2 above.
Other podcasts will always have a similar link that you can copy and paste.
Posted by kurtis at 9:54 AM | podcasting
Explore UThink Blogs
UThink, "the largest academic blogging tool in North America," is maintained by the University Libraries and enables University instructors, students and staff to create, contribute to and view blogs. The purpose of this exercise is to discover some educational uses of blogs through an exploration of UThink.
Assignment
1. To go to UThink, follow this link (page will open up in another tab or window).
Two suggested ways to explore UThink blogs: 1) On the front page in the middle you'll see "Recent Entries on UThink." Click on any link to see the entry and its blog. For a preview of the entry, scroll over the entry title 2) Search UThink using the keyword of your choice (upper right corner)
2. Take a few minutes to peruse the blog. Take note of entries, comments, layout, blogrolls and categories.
3. Post a comment to this entry, including the URL of blog you read and a few words about what it is. (Click "comments" underneath this entry, in the lower right corner.)
4. Be prepared to discuss with the group any comments you have about educational uses of blogs based on your observations, or any questions you have about educational uses of blogs.
Posted by clopez at 9:54 AM
Sample Audio Podcast
This is the audio track to the video file below.
Posted by kurtis at 9:12 AM | podcasting
Sample Video Podcast
Posted by kurtis at 9:03 AM | podcasting
