Week 1 Online Chat Thoughts/Comments

Week 1 (October 27) Recorded Chat Session Thoughts and Comments James Beeghley: Please take a moment to introduce yourself. My name is Peter May. I teach 3rd grade Language Arts, Science, Math, and Social Studies at Edgeworth Elementary in the Quaker Valley School District. I have been teaching at Edgeworth since I graduated from Gannon University in 2004. At Quaker Valley I coach the Freshman Boys Basketball team and the Elementary FIRST Lego and Robotics team. This is the fourth course I have taken towards a M.Ed. in Technology at Waynesburg. I missed the first 2 online chat sessions and am completing these reflections to make up for the participation. James Beeghley: so, what is Web 2.0? My understanding of Web 2.0 is that it is a movement for using technologies that may have already existed in new ways. It really doesn’t refer to any new technology or products, but to the way in which existing software and the web as a whole are utilized. It’s referring to using the web as a platform for dynamic communication and collaboration. Jim listed four basic application of technology that make up Web 2.0: Social networking, wikis, folksonomis, and blogs. James Beeghley: What would be an example of social networking? Some social networking examples that came to mind immediately were the popular free services of Myspace and Facebook. I don’t use these because of the reasons some other students cited. There isn’t a great way to control the content that can appear on your “personal” site. In the past I created a Myspace account due to peer pressure from old high school and college buddies who wanted to stay in touch. I never customized my account or added personal information. However, new and old friends were quick to post a variety of questionable content. I quickly realized it wasn’t the best idea for these comments, images, and videos to be broadcast on the Internet for anyone to see. I understand that people say even if you delete your account, it is not really gone. I understand that the content is still stored somewhere, but if your account itself is deleted or at the least inactive I have a hard time believing that other users could view it. Someone referred to a Myspace for businesses. I did a quick search and found a product that was supposed to be released in April of 2007. It is called Appspace. Here is a quick blurb I found regarding its aim: AppSpace, which allows businesses to create customer-facing portals on demand, will be available in limited release beginning in April. The software, the latest in Salesforce.com's rapid software-as-a-service roll-out strategy, allows companies to engage their customers by sharing documents with them or soliciting feedback through forums. AppSpace customers will also be able to add and share other on-demand enterprise applications with their customers. Not sure if this product has ever really gotten off the ground. The only articles I can find about it are talking about its release in the Spring of 2007. James Beeghley: so what is a wiki To clarify or comment on a question raised in this portion of the chat… “I thought the difference between a blog and a wiki was the number of authors? A blog is essentially created and maintained by 1 author and a wiki is collaborative?” I think Laura Ann is on the right track with this comment. However both a wiki and a blog lend themselves to collaboration. A wiki has many authors and any content on it can be edited or added to by those authors (assuming it is public). A blog on the other hand is created and maintained by one author, but can be added to in the form of comments stemming from the original authors thought’s or posts. I think that a successful blog or wiki must be collaborative in that multiple perspectives and ideas are shared. This idea reminds me of a popular “teacher” poster “None of us is as smart as all of us.” Just as we collaborate in the classroom through open discussions, brainstorming, KWLW activities, and coming to a genuine collective understanding, these activities can also be done in the web 2.0 world. James Beeghley: So, you can collaborate and edit informaiton. Lots of cool wikis out there. What about folksonomy? I am a fan of cloud tags especially. I appreciate the visual representation of tags in folksonomy. I use Del.icio.us to bookmark and share resources with my colleagues and try my best to tag my bookmarks appropriately with language that they would be apt to use. I think the big idea with folksonomy is that content is collectively classified by users with common sense keywords as opposed to using a specific predetermined vocabulary or other system of classification.