Week 12 (or the 23rd THING) - Course Summation

I made it. Had some trouble along the way, on the personal side, and I thought this course would fall by the wayside, but I persevered and here I am. For starters here are some answers to the pre-suggested questions from the Learning 2.0 site.

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

- Creating and maintaining a blog.
- Putting YouTube or other videos into my blog posts.

• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

I know a lot more about some of the fun things the internet has to offer besides just surfing. It takes some discipline to self learn, which I did throughout much of this course until I realized how to get to the Learning 2.0 website for tutorial instructions. So, in other words, I did this course the hard way, but I still figured it out.

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  

Not really any surprises; instead I would say there were a couple items I simply had no idea existed, for example RSS feeds, Tagging and Technorati. Some of the other material I was already familiar with, such as Facebook, YouTube, Blogs (though I didn't have one of my own).

Another thing I noticed, not sure if I'd call it a surprise though, is just how prevalent social networking is. I don't participate generally, but I have friends that are daily regulars on Facebook and similar sites.

As I mentioned throughout previous lessons, I doubt I will apply, at least not immediately anyway, the applications learned here to my job or our organization.

• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept

Nothing comes to mind. However, maybe I was just not paying attention in the beginning, but as I mentioned above, I didn't immediately clue in to the structure of this program, namely that Community Development Web 2.0 was piggy backing on the generic Learning 2.0 program. Once I latched onto the Community Development Web 2.0 home page, with its lessons and links to the Learning 2.0 website, the learning was much easier. I was initially just trying to follow a printed page summarizing the lesson objectives, and ended up doing an awful lot of googling to find learning material.

• And last but not least…If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

No, probably not. Well, maybe.

I enjoyed reading other posts. It helped me through this.

So now...we wait for the evolution towards Web 3.0 !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Take care, everyone.
Sandy

Week 11 - Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio

YouTube never ceases to amaze me. There hasn't been one subject of interest, or piece of video, that I have wanted to see, that has not been available on YouTube. Here's an example - the recent Mini Wheats commercial where the little wheaties were dancing to..."Mini wheats, wheats, wheats, with vanilla flavour can't be beat...". That song rang a bell from Club Med I was at years ago (20+). So the search began. Well in probably two minutes I had it on YouTube. It was Black Lace's Agadoo. And here it is...



I checked out Podcastalley. As expected, no shortage of content there, and as I read in a fellow student's writings, there is good, bad, and ugly content available. I also went to iTunes. We just recently loaded it onto our home computer since we have our first iPod in the house now. Again, lots of content available. I especially appreciate the earlier lesson now on RSS feeds, and how it makes sense to subscribe and have content delivered to one's machine, rather than go look it up manually all the time.

Being on a lite DSL internet connection, I find the download speeds rather slow, which is frustrating. It makes sense in this case to have content downloaded while I sleep.

I tried getting onto NetLibrary, but was unable to obtain a password through the PLCMC website link at the time. Oh well. I expect that application would be a specialized form of podcast, i.e. downloadable audiobooks.

week 10 assignment

Week 10 Assignment - Online Applications & Tools


Here I am in Zoho Writer composing by blog post. With any luck I'll be able to publish it from here as well. At least that is my goal. And if you are reading this, then I was successful.

Very cool. I like that there are abundantly more features and options than from within the standard blog editor.      ♦♥♣◊

That's it for Zoho for now. This might be one of those learnt tools that I return to after this course is over.

As for the Web 2.0 awards, see my previous post, where I linked to a food related podcast site (Im Cooked) where users could upload and share their own food and drink productions for all to see. I liked that one. Of course, there are some other top ranking sites that I am already familiar with, namely, YouTube, Google Earth, and Delicious, to name a few.

Week 9... Wikis and SandBox

A wiki is a collaborative website where the users are responsible for creating and maintaining the content. Probably the best example of a wiki is www.wikipedia.org

The wiki can be used as a Bulletin board for non profits to get information distributed about new projects, resources and activities happening in and around that particular community.

It could also be used as a News site, giving out information such as — Announcements, updates, articles and press releases about the organization and what it is doing at any given time. More like a online newsletter.

And now...for something completely different...



Sorry...getting ahead of myself. I found that little video from one of the Web 2.0 Awards List in the "food" category. I am particularly fond of chocolate martinis.

Back to business...

Add an Entry to Learning 2.0 Sandbox...OMG. It took me 3 hours to figure out exactly whose Learning 2.0 Sandbox to which I was supposed to post. To make a long story short, I finally discovered that we students at Community Development Web 2.0 are participating in a general 2.0 course (plcmclearning) that is used by many many organizations around the world. Anyway, I made my way to the plcmclearning pbwiki sandbox, and dutifully added by blog URL to the general list. Now on to Week 10 !!

Week 8 Assignment - Reflecting on Web 2.0 for Non-Profits

There are plenty of articles to be found discussing the use of Web 2.0 tools by non-profit organizations.

A blog I found interesting is found here.

http://nonprofitconsultant.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-web-20-is-important-to-small-local.html

This one hits home because it talks directly about using Web 2.0 tools in a non-profit organization, the likes of which I currently work for, and have been a board member/chair for in the past. The article generally favours the use of the technology. I would tend to agree. Communicating with the people of the community is paramount, and doing it via the social networking schemes available does have merit.

This sentiment is carried also in the following article which discusses specific tasks that can be achieved through a more interactive social approach, including fundraising, and promoting services:

What does Web 2.0 Mean For Your Nonprofit?
By Tiffany Meyer: Dec 11, 2007

A third article was:

Can Web 2.0 change the world?
Nonprofits embracing technology that built MySpace and YouTube
By Michael Rogers
Columnist
Special to msnbc.com

This column also suggested that Web 2.0 technology fits well because, one, it is generally cheap or free, which fits nicely with the non-profits' usual lack of money situation, and two, gets them "moving towards what they have the most of (people and community)".

This article basically talks about a gathering, in a conference setting, of a group called NetSquared. There is a web community called NetSquared.Org which I would like to check out, but haven't yet. It has been established to help non-profits to use the technology to support their cause.

Another article (sorry, lost the reference) sort of poo-pooed the idea that Web 2.0 could do much to help basic social assistance type organizations, saying that basic technology like photocopiers and telephones are probably more powerful tools for them. Makes sense, when the people you are helping probably don't have, or even have access to, computers and cell phones.

For the most part I am in agreement with the opinions and ideas presented in these articles. I do believe that Web 2.0 has a place in the non-profit organization. However, not just for the sake of it. It is important that implementation fit in with strategic planning for the organzation. The fact that I have been selected to take this course, in order to learn more, and presumably apply it some day in my job, is testament to the fact that my organization is taking a closer look at using these tools. However, there must be board buy-in. There will be resources required to support implementation (human and equipment). Most certainly, there will be challenges on both those fronts.

Week 6 Assignment - Tagging, Technorati, and Delicious

Tagging - I have encountered "tags" before during my internet travels, but never paid much attention to them. The tagging theme runs through many applications, e.g. Flickr, blogs, music, books (LibraryThing), etc. Tags are used to categorize and organize yourself. The interesting thing is that users themselves assign tags, making it interesting, fun, and useful. Regardless of how unorthodox a tag name you might choose, there's bound to be someone else who chose it too, hence you will find others with same tags as yourself. Another interesting concept I discovered about blog tagging was that you could tag someone else...."tag, you're it!". One blog site mentioned that it also had a tagging system whereby if you were being spammed by someone, you could tag them back with a special tag (Schmoe, in that case) and the authorities running the site would take action. I also discovered tag clouds, which gives a visually user-friendly and easy to see heirarchy of tags associated with the subject (be it photos, a blog, or whatever). Large, bold tags are the most common ones, whereas small tags are the least common.

Technorati - is a site that keeps track of blog tags. If your blog tag is recognized by this site (which can be done by pinging it) then your blog will be more visible to the world, by virtue of their using a site such as this to search for types of blog posts. I did not attempt to get this blog tagged in way or recognized by Technorati. I'm not sure if that capability is easily done on blogspot. I gather that some blog applications make it easier than others. I did read that one can manually incorporate some html directly into one's blog post, and that will generate the necessary "ping" to technorati, or something like that.

Delicious - is a social bookmarking site. Like tagging of books or photos, this site allows you to add, organize, and tag your favourite websites. And again, as in other tagging schemes, you can then see who else is tagging sites with the same tag names as you, which might lead you to sites of interest that you would not otherwise have found. I did not actually set up an account here. I did try searching on a subject of interest. I found that it came up with a number of relevant websites, but it would seem the same sites would likely have appeared had I just done a Google search using the same search words. However, linking to the tags within the results pages offers another avenue for exploring the subject, as compared to just web page hopping through the google results.

Week 5 Assignment - Facebook and Librarything

I've been unable to get to my assignments for a couple of weeks due to personal reasons. I will endeavour to catch up, with the help of catch up week and in the week(s) to follow (no down time for me!).

Facebook...the infamous, or rather famous, facebook! I already have an account there. However, I'm definitely no power user, not being of the under-20 crowd, not that that is a pre-requisite. I'll check into it occasionally, maybe a few times a month. I checked the Green:because you can page. I really didn't get it. There are some discussion boards, photos, wall posts. Most of what I read was a complete waste of my time. Alot of people spouting off at each other, with lots of expletives in their text.

As for organizations using facebook, I have my doubts. You hear good things and bad things about it. I doubt most organizations would take facebook seriously as a means for people to communicate with each other or the organization. I would probably set up a discussion forum on some other forum hosting site, long before doing it on facebook. I see facebook as more of a social site, rather than business or professional. Benefits include ease of use, familiarity, robustness of the site (i.e. little downtime, I'm guessing). Concerns may include not being seen as a professional web destination for carrying out business, privacy issues, and filtering out all the chit chat.

Now onto Librarything. No offense people, but why? More of the same, it seems, giving you quick links to others who have common reading interests. I can do that on this blog if I want through links in the profiles. Ok, yes, Librarything specializes in cataloguing and makes it easy, and I'm sure it does a lot more. I guess it's just not my thing. Mind you, it was pretty cool entering the ISBN number for an old paperback copy of Lord of the Rings that I have (approx 1975 printing) and seeing the actual cover design of my old version pop up within seconds. Anyway, I doubt I'll use this one ever again. I noticed the line at the end of the homepage that reads: "If the buzz page doesn't convince you, you cannot be convinced. Go away."... OK then.

Now, onto Week 6!