I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook recently. I'm confident & comfortable enough there now to admit publicly that I'd steered clear of it for ages because I had it confused with Faceparty, controversial hangout of teens & thrill-seekers with money to spend on its more, um, interesting features.
One big attraction of Facebook for me is the way it lets me combine different real-world networks: my Facebook "Friends" are primarily OU colleagues, but also fellow students & family members. Another appealing feature is the "status updates" where I can post short & trivial comments about what I'm doing right now, & read the same from my friends. I don't always feel like writing a mini-essay for a blog entry, but there's always time for a quick Facebook post.
There's no doubt that Facebook is becoming increasingly pervasive. Just two illustrations, one positive & one negative:
1. A personal anecdote...
I look after several FirstClass forums for (mostly new) OU students. This week, for the first time, one of the new arrivals announced - within hours of the forum opening - that she had created a Facebook group for fellow students on that presentation of her course. She didn't need to explain what Facebook was, & within a day, over 20 members had signed up.
2. Two news stories this week...
Tuesday saw hysterical reports of the 233 million hours a month spent on Facebook & similar social networking sites by UK workers, along with calls for such access to be banned.
Then on Wednesday, we were 'reassured' (ie alarmed) about the risks of loss of privacy & even identity theft associated with Facebook.
I'm not yet convinced of Facebook's potential as a pedagogical (rather than social) aid to learning, but I don't think it's just a fad, & I certainly don't think it marks the End Of Civilisation As We Know It.
Saturday, 15 September 2007
Friday, 14 September 2007
What is Web 2.0 anyway?
Good question, & I'm only bluffing my way around the topic myself!
Here's Wikipedia's current take on it:
The original World Wide Web was, & still is, a democratising & empowering phenomenon because it allowed anyone (well, almost anyone) to become a writer, a producer of content. But it was still very much one-way: a single person, or a small team of people, creates a web page, & the rest of us are merely visitors. In Web 2.0, although there's still a place for passing visitors, the point is to get involved - to produce, as well as consuming.
I see blogs as a transitional stage; not all allow readers to comment, & even those that do, have the comments tucked away, requiring an extra click to access them, & un-searchable. Nevertheless, blogging is a significant advance - Web 1.5, perhaps - because it generally treats readers as almost equal particiapants in the process. I'm a hesitant explorer of new territories compared with many of my colleagues, yet even I've had a blog for almost four years, which suggests it's hardly cutting edge any more!
As far as social networking is concerned, my MySpace page is more recent (June 2005) & I only joined Facebook this year. The proliferation of new Web 2.0 stuff with funny names shy of a few vowels (Flickr) or idiosyncratically punctuated (del.icio.us)is only just starting to impinge on my day to day activities. This blog will partly be a record of my journey into Web 2.0, though given my caution, it's quite likely to be Web 3.0 by the time I get there!
Here's Wikipedia's current take on it:
"the phrase Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users."My own view has been slightly simpler - I see Web 2.0 as a development where the previous boundaries between writers & readers have become blurred.
The original World Wide Web was, & still is, a democratising & empowering phenomenon because it allowed anyone (well, almost anyone) to become a writer, a producer of content. But it was still very much one-way: a single person, or a small team of people, creates a web page, & the rest of us are merely visitors. In Web 2.0, although there's still a place for passing visitors, the point is to get involved - to produce, as well as consuming.
I see blogs as a transitional stage; not all allow readers to comment, & even those that do, have the comments tucked away, requiring an extra click to access them, & un-searchable. Nevertheless, blogging is a significant advance - Web 1.5, perhaps - because it generally treats readers as almost equal particiapants in the process. I'm a hesitant explorer of new territories compared with many of my colleagues, yet even I've had a blog for almost four years, which suggests it's hardly cutting edge any more!
As far as social networking is concerned, my MySpace page is more recent (June 2005) & I only joined Facebook this year. The proliferation of new Web 2.0 stuff with funny names shy of a few vowels (Flickr) or idiosyncratically punctuated (del.icio.us)is only just starting to impinge on my day to day activities. This blog will partly be a record of my journey into Web 2.0, though given my caution, it's quite likely to be Web 3.0 by the time I get there!
Slidecasting
...I'd been thinking it was time to split off my OU/techie blogging from the "What I did on my holidays" stuff. Keeping them apart worked well when I was blogging for H806, but I'd left that behind when the course ended. Then today I watched Martin's slidecast & was intrigued both professionally & personally.
On a professional level, for the reasons I outlined in a comment on Martin's OU blog. Basically, a slidecast strikes me as an ideal compromise between uploading a set of Powerpoint slides after a presentation (if the presenter is any good, the slides alone will fail to capture more than a tiny fraction of what was actually delivered - I often find them frustratingly cryptic)& full-on webcasting, which is heavy on resources, unsuited to desktop PC screens (especially for those of us with less than perfect vision)& more inhibiting for a presenter than simply having their voice recorded. A slidecast is also - as Martin's post demonstrates - great for embedding in other forms of online media.
At a personal level, I was amused by Martin's "rules" for blogging, which included the "I'm not interested in your cat" line. Now, I don't have a cat - I'm not even particularly fond of them - but if I did, Bluefluff would certainly have blogged about it! This reminded me about my vague intentions to Do Something about sorting out my own blogging.
Hence Bluefluff 2.0 - not only Bluefluff's second incarnation, but one that will be (loosely) focused on what are (loosely) referred to as Web 2.0 phenomena, the second generation web. Slidecasting seems as good a place as any to start.
On a professional level, for the reasons I outlined in a comment on Martin's OU blog. Basically, a slidecast strikes me as an ideal compromise between uploading a set of Powerpoint slides after a presentation (if the presenter is any good, the slides alone will fail to capture more than a tiny fraction of what was actually delivered - I often find them frustratingly cryptic)& full-on webcasting, which is heavy on resources, unsuited to desktop PC screens (especially for those of us with less than perfect vision)& more inhibiting for a presenter than simply having their voice recorded. A slidecast is also - as Martin's post demonstrates - great for embedding in other forms of online media.
At a personal level, I was amused by Martin's "rules" for blogging, which included the "I'm not interested in your cat" line. Now, I don't have a cat - I'm not even particularly fond of them - but if I did, Bluefluff would certainly have blogged about it! This reminded me about my vague intentions to Do Something about sorting out my own blogging.
Hence Bluefluff 2.0 - not only Bluefluff's second incarnation, but one that will be (loosely) focused on what are (loosely) referred to as Web 2.0 phenomena, the second generation web. Slidecasting seems as good a place as any to start.
Thursday, 13 September 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
