Week 6-3. Reflection

I am glad that I am taking this course. For the past few weeks, I've learned some Web 2.0 technologies and how to incorporate them to improve learning and performance. All the course activities and assignment made me realize that no one of technology can provide all the things that we needs. Combining a few technologies can provide a more comprehensive tools that meet our needs. Another things that is important for me is understanding the Produsage principles.

I do plan to learn and explore intensively some of the technologies that I can be used personally as a lifelong learners and professionally as a lecturer. CiteULike, Diigo, Wikispaces, blog, Facebook and Ning are some technologies that I think I use to improve my work performance.
I definetely need to chose the tool that my future students can use it. I was so sad when I had to teach "Computer and learning media" for elementary school teachers. Some of them did not know how to use computer, even they have computer in their home or school, they never use it because they were afraid that they could damage the computer. So I had to teach them from the very basic so finally they can use word document and excel.

Thanks Dr. Dennen, Woon-Jee, Christy, and my classmates. Have a nice break.

Week 6-2. My experience with Ning

Finally, I have a time to explore Ning. I have no idea that the Ning interface is so user friendly. Before I tried it, I thought it would require a lot of time to get familiar with the interface and the features. I've created a network "for better education" and played around with the features, although I've not start any discussion. I plan to keep this site and invite others to join the network. Hopefully, I can manage this site to give my "little" contribution to improve my country's education quality.

Week 6-1. Information about my produsage #2

I decided to provide more information about my produsage #2. For this assignment I created NF Coffe Hour - for Teacher Development blog to provide an informal learning media for the NF community where they can share ideas, articles, videos in how to improve the quality and the competency of the teachers.

NF is an acronim for Nurul Fikri. Actually its full name is Nurul Fikri Boarding School (NFBS). It is an educational institution that manages junior and senior high schools. The schools are located in Anyer, Banten while the headquarter is located in Depok, West Java.

The initial thought of creating this blog is for the NF community only, since they've an official website for the public consumption. Right now, my position is as the administrator of this blog. I've invited the leaders of this organization to be the authors/contributors of this blog. So far there are five person who confirmed and agreed to become the authors of this blog. The intended audience of this blog is the NFBS's teachers. For the purpose of the course's assigment, I still open this blog so that anyone can access it. I will invited the teachers as the readers of this blog later after this class is finished.

I am still trying to fix the translation tool. There also another thing that I want to fix. I want to make the post become short and provide "the read more" in each post. I've tried to do it by edit the html and by modify the site feed but it wasn't work.
Could anyone tell me how to do it? Thank you so much in advance.

Week 5 - 3. Authorship, copyright and open access.

Authorship copyright, and open access issues do impact my desire and willingness to engage in produsage.
I would engage in produsage if the developer of the produsage inform the purpose and expectation clearly. That way, I would feel comfortable to contribute in it. But, if I don't know the expectation, even I do want to contribute something, I won't do it because I am worry if what I've created would distract the overall produsage creation.

I do aware with copyright issue right now. In the past, I didn't really care about this issue, since I thought that I was far away from the author and I only use it personally and for educational setting. But right now, I do care about it and I become more careful to use graphic, etc from the internet.

I am glad that my work place still allows some web 2.0 tools to be access by the employers. I do understand why some organization locked down those tools. For example Facebook, the simple reason to locked down it is because the workers would spend their work hour to open their account.
Personally, I would more engage to contribute if the site I visited give easy access to the readers to post comment or add something.

Week 5-2. CiteUlike

Reading Bi-Jen's blog entry about CiteUlike motivated me to explore this tool. CiteUlike is dedicated for academic purposes, while Delicious can be used to bookmark anything.

I do like the "Journal" feature that enable the user to search journal article more easily. After finding the article, I can copy it to my library. The citation detail automatically exctracted to my library so I didn't need to type it again. Its support systems are also amazing. There are many database that support CiteUlike.
Love it!

Week 5-1. Exploring Second Life

I tried out Second life this week. It wasn't a very exciting experience because I faced some technical problem during exploring this tool. My laptop didn't meet the SL's system requirement, so sometimes I couldn't try out such things. The first time I tried SL, I did it with my kids so I only played around and looking some islands.
For the second time, I visited the FSU island created by Bryan. The wikispaces is very helpful. That time, I explored the "build" tools. I tried to build a building, but the result was not good, so I deleted it. During that time, my internet connection was very bad. I often lost the internet connection that made me logged out automaticly from SL. That was very distracting, because I had to log in again and again. So after almost two hours, I decided to finish it.
I do plan to try it again and show what we can do in SL to my first son, because I think he will enjoy creating something in it since he likes to draw.

Week 4 -3. Delicious

This week I decided to learn how to use Delicious. As a social bookmark, I think Delicious is cool. The interface is user friendly. I can easily add some sites that I like and import my old bookmark into delicious. It also have some features that help me to organize my bookmark. I think I will use delicious as my bookmark tool.


Right now, I've not found its weaknesses yet. Anyone?

Week 4 -2. Do you want to make a friendship or to collect friends?

The question above was posted by one of my friends in Facebook. I remember this question again because it has similar notion with what Charlene point out in discussion board.

At the beginning, I only added people that I knew or people who I thought have the similar interest or goals. Later, the friend requests became wider and based on the belief that making a lot of friends is the purpose of social networking, I always confirmed them as friends. It was quite fun to build up friendships with new friends. But the more friends I have, the more difficult I keep in touch with them. I must admit that most of the time I keep in touch with friends who I already know before.

A few friends of mine actually misrecognize me with someone else. My name is a very common name in my country; there are a lot of women whose name are the same with mine. I knew that they misrecognize me when they tagged me on their photos or when we had a chat conversation. I usually removed the tag and informed them that I am not the person. It was funny sometimes but sometimes it also annoying. After that, I become more careful in making a new friend in Facebook.

Week 4 - 1. Expertise

How do I judge the value of expertise on the Web?

• If I don't recognize the author, I will read the author's background information. I often found a short biography of the author that provide the author's educational background and publications. From these types of information, I can value the author's expertise.
• From the content of the articles/information. If the author discuss the content in depth, I can assume that the author know the content very well. It will be more easily to judge if I familiar with the content/information provided by the author.
• From the comments. The comments provided by other readers also help me to judge the value of expertise on the Web.

The ways I judge the value of expertise on the Web and in face to face setting are similar. Although it more difficult to judge the value of expertise on the Web than in f2f setting. In f2f setting, such as in seminar, at the beginning the moderator usually give a brief introduction about the presenter and during the presentation time, I can judge the level of expertise from the content delivered by the presenter, the way he/she deliver the information and how he/she answer the questions.

Week 3 -3. Trying out to write a post from email

This is my first experience to write a post from my yahoo email. Hope it'll work. Before I learned to write a post from email, I wanted to integrate Facebook and blog using mirror but I failed because an transport error was occurred during the process. It happen maybe because the internet signals was not so good. Right now I in a little village at Kuningan-West Java visiting my parents in law. I am glad that I still receive the signals eventhough sometimes it took a while to open BB, email and other internet application. After exploring some features or application in blog and facebook, I think Web 2.0 tools are great. For example, they can integrate one tool to another that make the user easier to participate. Just like what I do right now, I don't have to open my blog to post my EJ because I can write it from my email account.

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Week 3-2. Little discussion on Web 2.0

On Friday, after my husband and I went to book store where we saw a lot of book that discuss about Facebook, blogs and some other web 2.0 tools, my husband ask me one question. What was web 2.0 exactly? Although he often use Facebook, blog, and Google doc, however he doesn't know that both of them are web 2.0 tools. I guess many people are like my husband who often use Facebook or blog, but they don't know the term "web 2.0".
My answer to his question was simple, Web 2.0 is the term that is used to describe the second generation of web that enable the users to be more active participant who can edit, add comment, or share information.
We continued our discussion about some application of Web 2.0. Until he said that he wanted his institution to be more paperless, because the cost to buy paper was very high. Then we agree to try blog to develop community of practice. I will set-up the blog for his organization, it is also for my produsage #2.

Week 3-1. Wiki or blog?

Both wiki and blog could be used for collaborative work. However, when is the best time to use wiki and blog?

There are some question that I will need to answer when I want to use wiki, blog, or both of them, such as "Do Iwant the users to read only?; read and comment but not edit?; be able to read or edit? or what is the purpose of the task?"
Since blog is more personal, it is best used when I want the learner to share experiences, opinions, or creations that reflect their learning where other learners can only read the posting and make a comment.
Wikis are tools which allow learners to co-construct a web page. Wikis are best used for collaborative tasks where others can edit the text.
Others concern that I need to be address are reliability, confidentiality, and safety.

If management wants to implement these tools, encouraging the employees and the students to participate could be the challenge since some of them maybe don't have the willing to learn new technologies and don't want to change the way they work or learn.

Week 2 - 3. Flickr

Another Web 2.0 tool that I learned this week was Flickr. Even though I knew it for a long time and visited some of the users' accounts but I never created a Flickr account for myself. Because I am not a photographer but I do enjoyed to see the photos posted in Flickr, specially those which taken by professional photographer.

Flickr is classified as online collaboration tools focused on images and visuals. What make it a great Web 2.0 tools is local-photos management software that allow users to post their images and share it with others. Users can annotated images, add comments, and tag the images. That why Flickr can be used in educational setting that is releted with the art works.

Week 2- 2Twitter, Facebook and Savor chat

I've create an account in Twitter in order to learn more about Twitter. Twitter is designed to support micro-interaction, maybe that why it only provide 140 characters for its users to post their personal information. Like blog or Facebook, Twitter has user-friendly interface.

I followed Pete Cashmore and learned a lot from him on how to get start with Twitter. He provides a lot of information on things what we can do with Twitter. I've tried to combine Facebook and Twitter for Live chat using Savor Chat. I think it is a great software, since it can bring Facebook and Twitter together.

Week 2 - 1. Produsage and produser

To be honest, it is still difficult for me to define the term "produsage". I am unsure if I have master the concept of produsage clearly. My understanding on the concept of produsage: it is a fluid co-creation of social artefacts, always unfinished, and part of a field of intercreativity of informational communities. In the produsage concept, there is no seperation between production, distribution, and consumption.

In regard to personal life, I think I already applied the concept of produsage in few cases, however in my professional life, most of the time I applied the older concept "production" because almost all the works that I did were end on " a product", such as module and examination items.

Am I already a produser? I think so, but I still have to learn more about it. I often use IM not only to chat with friends but also to discuss something where each of us share our knowledge related to the issue. Could it be classified as produser?
Some of my Facebook friends are really good produser. They often post really good information in their post or their notes that are very useful to me.

Week 1, 3rd entry: web 2.0 tools

Web 2.0 provides some tools that can be categorized as:

• blog is a webpage where user can enter their posts that might contain information or personal diary.
• collaborative editing tools, such as wikis, google docs, spreadsheets, gliffy are some of Web 2.0 tools that can be use for collaboration activities.
• tagging and social bookmarking. social bookmarking services allow users to create a list of bookmark and allow them to share their tagged bookmark with other users and categorized these bookmarks according to the tags.
• multimedia sharing are a series of web services that allow users to post, view, and provide comments about various media. These services include YouTube, Geogle video, Flickr, Odeo, and Slideshare.
• social networking is web services that allow users to develop their personal page and make link with others' personal pages to develop social networks. Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn are some of the web services that specialized in social networking.
• RSS is a family of web feed formats for syndicating content from web pages and allow users to learn new entries without visiting it.

Week 1, 2nd entry: A note on collaboration

The term Web 2.0 was first used in 2004 and refers to what is perceived as a second generation of the Web which is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Thus, "collaboration and sharing" is the soul of Web 2.0.

What is collaboration any way? Collaboration can be defined as the action of working with other people that have same common goals to create something.

What are the characteristics of good collaboration tools? Collaboration tool as a medium or device should: a) have the abilities to facilitate communication and interaction between participants; b) have the abilities to share diagrams, photos, or videos; c) have lower barrier and easy-to-use interface.

Week 1, 1st entry: Follower for now....Next must become a leader

As an active contributor, I don't have many experiences with Web 2.0 tools. I've used some Web 2.0 tools (e.g Wikispaces, blog, Gliffy) as regard to course requirement and Facebook as my social network software. I also often use other Web 2.0 tools such as Youtube to find information on how to do someAthing. That why for now, I would consider myself as follower in Web 2.0 eras. However, I do plan to become a leader in the future where I create my own personal blog and incorporate some of Web 2.0 technologies in my course activities, so I could engage and motivate my students and also provide more learning opportunities for them.

I hope this class will increase my knowledge about Web 2.0 technologies and how to applied them in instructional setting.