Freedomofexpression28's Blog

What is Twitter?

freedomofexpression28 — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:00:19 +0000

On Mashable.com, I learned that 69 percent of adults don’t know enough about Twitter “to have an opinion about it.” Of those that do have an opinion of Twitter, 12 percent think it’s poised for exponential growth, another 12 percent think it’s something that will stay relegated to “young people and the media,” while 8 percent think it’s just a passing fad. Further research taught me that Twitter is often thought of as a Micro-blogging which is a quick update usually containing a very limited number of characters. Micro-blogging is what you do when you update your status on Facebook. Instead of some long, drawn out paragraph about your day and how you’re feeling, sometimes you just want to say, “Not in a good mood…” or “Out with a friend..txt/call the cell.” Not only that, but Twitter is social messaging (networking). With the ability to follow people and have followers, and the ability to have interact with Twitter on your cell phone, Twitter has become the perfect social messaging tool. While researching, I stumbled upon some interesting facts, “Earlier this year, actor Ashton Kutcher challenged and won a race against CNN to reach 1 million followers.” Also this year, a woman who follows Kutcher’s wife, Demi Moore, posted her intention to commit suicide on Moore’s Twitter feed. Alerted by Moore and other Twitter users, police were able to find the woman and get her treatment. In my opinion, you shouldn’t consider Twitter as some dumb experiment. According to Sue Waters, it is an incredibly powerful tool for your personal learning and connecting with others. Concluding, Twitter is micro-blogging. It is social messaging. It is even an event coordinator, a business tool, a news reporting service and a marketing utility. All you need to Twitter is an internet connection or a mobile phone.

http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworking/a/what-is-twitter.htm

http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/13920

http://www.qctimes.com/article_9e9f73e8-7f10-11de-97c9-001cc4c002e0.html

Podcasting and Vodcasting

freedomofexpression28 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:09:25 +0000

According to Christopher Breen, Playlist Magazine, podcasts are so last month! If you want to get in on the “hip trip”, you’ll turn your attention (and camcorder) to vodcasts—Video-On-Demand-casts, that is. Podcast software allows users to record, edit and publish audio online. It goes beyond what average audio programs do by allowing users advanced options in the areas of creating, editing and publishing and audio (i.e. Interactive Media at work). With podcast software, users can also add special audio effects, mix and split tracks and convert audio formats. Probably the most significant aspect of podcast software is its publishing capability. Podcasting software is designed for publishing and thus has the tools to make publishing audio straightforward and user-friendly. Users can create RSS feeds and add descriptions and tags to their podcasts so that they can be easily organized and found by potential listeners. In the past, podcasting was originally only for audio files; more people are beginning to send video, especially with broadband connections more accessible. For podcast video, content distributors enclose it in a website syndication file that users can download and view when they want. Users subscribe to different files, check for updates regularly, and download new offers as they become available. Each file is often referred to as an episode or part of a video blog, or vlog. Vodcasting, like podcasting, is a subscription technology. When you’re surfing the web, you may have noticed icons on web sites that say “RSS” or contain some link to an RSS or Atom feed. These icons contain a link to the site’s feed file which allows the item to play. You can, of course, watch a vodcast on your computer due to the fact that some vodcasts use streaming technology, which means you must be connected to the Internet at the time you want to watch them.

http://www.macworld.com/article/46066/2005/07/howtovodcast.html
http://www.cvisual.com/film-techniques/vodcast-01-what-is-vodcast.asp
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-podcast-software.htm
http://www.holy007.com/what-is-podcast-video/

Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System

freedomofexpression28 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:47:29 +0000

Wikipedia’s definition of communities of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) states that it is the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals. “One of the best-known, early examples of a CoP is one formed by the copy machine repair technicians at Xerox Corporation. Through networking and sharing their experiences, particularly the problems they encountered and the solutions they devised, a core group of these technicians proved extremely effective in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of efforts to diagnose and repair Xerox customers’ copy machines.” There are two types of Communities of Practice but the most common are Self Organizing. From my understanding, Facebook is a perfect example of Self Organizing CoP. Facebook is a system that enables its members or the community to communicate with friends and find out the latest happenings within its society. One thing that you can do with Facebook is blogging. Blogging is a kind of feature writing made by individuals to dictate or narrate the daily happening in their lives. The article itself is known as a blog. Blogs are diaries made online regarding writings, articles, photos, and other Web links made by the creators of the blogs or “bloggers”. In other words, when I think CoP, I think Blogs, because they can better inform the viewers of the article about what’s currently happening to the blogger. Also, it creates a bond between the blogger and its readers whereas the readers can leave comments or opinions about the said article. It builds a deeper profile of the writer, exhibiting the writer’s talents and capabilities, even the organization he is into. In my opinion, the whole concept of CoP reiterate Collective intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice

http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/CoPOverview.pdf

http://ezinearticles.com/?id=2051450

The Essence of Blogging

freedomofexpression28 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:51:42 +0000

(What is Blogging?)
In class, we learned that blogging has become very popular among people today. Blogs are an essential part of learning; they are like the world’s journals. Blogger was released in August 1999 and was an immediate hit. By October 2000, Blogger users were creating 300 new blogs a day, and the Blogger directory had over 5,500 blogs listed. In November of the same year, the 10,000th Blogger weblog was created. As of 2002, Blogger claimed over 750,000 users.

(How has it changed)
Blogs are updated frequently and used for everything such as educational purposes, chronicles, diaries, email lists, bulletin board systems, and more. When the Internet came about, users wanted a way to communicate with people all over the world, and TADAH! BLOGGING! Remember the little pink book with the lock and key or the journal (concealing our thoughts, our feelings, even our moods or our hopes and dreams?), that so many of us used to keep growing up? Since Blogging came about, that diary or journal has been “put on the backburner”, meaning you probably don’t know where it is, let alone are thinking about finding it. Am I right? blogs are about both writing and reading, being that now one’s professional practice and ones instructional practice can be facilitated with the same technology.

(What are the potential usages of a blog beyond just content writing?)
The following are just a few ways blogs can be used:
1) Updates Keep customers/clients up to date on changes to your website. Also new product announcement and new related websites.
2) Reviews You can give opinions, advice and personal recommendations on specific products or services related to your field.
3) Personal and Business uses Blogs are a great way to keep track of your goals and plans just by open writing.
4) Stress Reliever Jot down your vents, gripes, thoughts. Some also find general writing therapeutic.
5) Search Engine Optimization Search Engines love text and content. You can also include links to your website which equal backward links which in turn equals high ranking.
6) Money Makers Yes, you can make money with your blog by providing readers with quality copy writing and a few affiliate links. http://www.blog-connection.com/what-is-blogging.htm

( How is blogging contributing to Collective-Shared Intelligence?)
Blogs are liberating flows of ideas that can be edited or commented on. They range anywhere from personal, to educational, to business. The process of blogging helps people reach a higher complexity of thinking. When thinking of blogging and how it contributes to collective shared intelligence, the phrase, “two heads are better than one” come to mind. For example, you can have one person spending hours on end trying to find a place to eat in unfamiliar territory, but if there are people in the car with that person who’ve already visited said area makes a suggestion, then all you have to do now is start the process of elimination. That’s exactly what blogging does. Blogging channels the flow of ideas and the direction of effort in such a way that the many contribute to and understand the one at hand. Simply put, Blogging connects the different people in a way that encourages ongoing, neural exchange of critical ideas, i.e. social networking, or Collective-Shared Intelligence.

(What is the next evolutionary level for blog? How do you think they will be used in the future and how is that different from today?)
Personally, I believe that since blogging has become increasingly popular, that people are going to get bored with it, or it will start getting slower . I think that somebody is going to come up with a faster way of Blogging with even more gadgets to keep the user’s attention.

http://tzuvelli.com/blog-launch-lessons-learned

What is Collective Intelligence?

freedomofexpression28 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:18:27 +0000

Collective Intelligence can be thought of as a central person in a circle encircled by other people who are encircled by other people to an infinite degree. Because none of us stand alone in this world when we are faced by problems and situations beyond our control, it is important to know that we can come together collectively to solve those problems. The problem may concern a group as small as a family unit, or it may be a problem of global proportions.

Families must sometimes come together and brainstorm thorough problems that affect the entire family. It is much easier for a group, whether it be a social group, community group, political group, or global group to make intelligent decisions if they rely on collective intelligence. If we accept the notion that we are all a part of a global family, then we must rely on the collective intelligence of all.

That said, it should be pointed out that sometimes collective intelligence can become “collective stupidity.”

Collective Intelligence means that we are better together than we are alone when we are in unchartered territory. It is important that leaders of organizations recognize the power of collective intelligence, but it will not matter if the leader does not place any trust in the ability of the group to make better decisions as a whole than he could make as an individual. Let’s take a look at Presidents Bush and Obama. They were both surrounded by groups of intelligent people, but they each had different outcomes. Bush is considered by most people to be an “idiot” due to the fact that he didn’t listen to anybody. He did what he wanted to do, which is why we went to war to Iraq. Whereas Obama, right now, is more partial to what the people want. I’m not saying that he is doing everything right, but I believe that since he has been in office, everyone has a more positive view on the things that are going on in the country and have a better chance of having a “voice” so to speak.

Aside from people physically meeting with each other, Collective intelligence can also be defined as a form of networking due to the rise of communicating technologies i.e. the Internet. Web 2.0 allows the users to manufacture content according to their preferences. This in turn, helps to enhance the social pool of existing knowledge, especially in this day and time. Now, instead of having to pay someone to fix a problem, most people just Google it and pick the alternative (whether it be through forums, blogs, or wikis) that best suites them. Not only that, but you can post questions and have a guaranteed variety of responses. As stated earlier, collective intelligence is just people that put their heads together to try and solve a problem concerning a group as small as a family, or as big as global proportions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/606

What is RSS (“Really Simple Syndication“)?

freedomofexpression28 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:07:38 +0000

According to rss-specifications, RSS is a defined standard based on XML with the specific purpose of delivering updates to web-based content. RSS is becoming increasing popular. It is by far the most popular feed being used today, because of it’s free and easy use. To my understanding, RSS allows the user to share and distribute web content. The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape when they were trying to get into the portal business. The main difference between web content and RSS is content published in an RSS feed is typically set up to send out notifications whenever new material is available. Because RSS is popular with both bloggers and news media organizations, you can use RSS search engines to find information in near real-time. Listed below is a chart of RSS Versions and Recommendations which I thought would be useful:

RSS versions and recommendations
Version	Owner	Pros	Status	Recommendation
0.90	Netscape		Obsoleted by 1.0	Don’t use
0.91	UserLand	Drop dead simple	Officially obsoleted by 2.0, but still quite popular	Use for basic syndication. Easy migration path to 2.0 if you need more flexibility
0.92, 0.93, 0.94	UserLand	Allows richer metadata than 0.91	Obsoleted by 2.0	Use 2.0 instead
1.0	RSS-DEV Working Group	RDF-based, extensibility via modules, not controlled by a single vendor	Stable core, active module development	Use for RDF-based applications or if you need advanced RDF-specific modules
2.0	UserLand	Extensibility via modules, easy migration path from 0.9x branch	Stable core, active module development	Use for general-purpose, metadata-rich syndication

http://www.rss-specifications.com/what-is-rss.htm

http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1080

http://searchenginewatch.com/3530926

What is a Personal Learning Environment?

freedomofexpression28 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:33:29 +0000

Like Michael Jackson, the face of technology has constantly changed and there are always new advancements being made. One of these many advancements was a Personal Learning Environment. A Personal Learning Environment is anything that constitutes what the learner is using to direct their learning or educational goals. A PLE gives you a chance to take control of how you learn. Personal Learning Environments like Web 2.0 and Interactive Media involve immense amounts of communication. When I think of this term, I immediately think of High School. Like the classes in School, Personal Learning Environments help you set your own learning goals; manage your learning; manage both content and process; and once again, communicate with others in the process of learning. Although it is Web 2.0, it’s not just that, it’s broader. It allows the user to explore, create, and interact, based on his or her interests. Personal learning environments are just what the name implies. They are derived from the perspective of the user. I mean really, who better to “conceive” the idea of your personal learning environment but the user? From my research, I have concluded that PLE too, is one of those terms that don’t have a right/wrong or shall I say exact definition. It means different things to different people. In turn, your definition depends on who you are.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf

http://www.ask.com/bar?q=what+is+a+personal+learning+environment%3F&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=9&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prolearn-academy.org%2FEvents%2Fsummer-school-2008%2Fworkshops%2Fpersonal-learning-environment-ple-2013-a-new-learning-concept-or-a-new-learning-system%2F

http://www.ask.com/bar?q=who+uses+personal+learning+environments%3F&page=1&qsrc=2106&ab=5&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.optusnet.com.au%2Frlubensky%2F2006%2F12%2Fpresent-and-future-of-personal-learning.html

My Multiple Intelligence Strengths

freedomofexpression28 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:21:39 +0000

I totally agree with this assessment. >>Interpersonal<>Intrapersonal << I love poetry, and I am inspired by it. I actually have a journal in which I write poetry in. I absolutely LOVE to read and work with computers! Reading and working on the computer gets my “creative juices” flowing by allowing me to use my imagination. Last, but not least >>Language<<. It obliges me to learn new words, which is an perk to reading, especially when I come across a word I don’t know. If I don’t know the word I will get a dictionary or look it up online.

Social >>4.57<<: You like to develop ideas and learn from other people. You like to talk. You have good social skills. Effective techniques of enhancing your learning using your social intelligence include taking part in group discussions or discussing a topic one-to-one with another person. Find ways to build reading and writing exercises into your group activities, such as:

Reading a dialogue or a play with other people

Doing team learning/investigating projects

Setting up interview questions and interviewing your family, and writing down the interview

Writing notes to another instead of talking.

Self >>4.43<<: You have a very good sense of self. You like to spend time by yourself and think things over. You will often take in information from another person, mull it over by yourself, and come back to that person later to discuss it. You like working on projects on your own. You often prefer to learn by trial and error. Effective techniques to enhance your learning include keeping a journal and giving yourself time to reflect on new ideas and information. More ideas:

Go on “guided imagery” tours.

Set aside time to reflect on new ideas and information.

Encourage journal writing.

Work on the computer.

Practice breathing for relaxation.

Use brainstorming methods before reading.

Listen to and read “how to” tapes and books.

Read cookbooks

Language >>3.71<< You enjoy saying, hearing, and seeing words. You like telling stories. You are motivated by books, records, dramas, opportunities for writing. Effective techniques of enhancing your learning using your language intelligence include reading aloud, especially plays and poetry. Another idea is to write down reflections on what you’ve read. You may also enjoy exploring and developing your love of words, i.e., meanings of words, origins of words and idioms, names. Use different kinds of dictionaries. Other ideas:

Keep a journal

Use a tape recorder to tape stories and write them down

Read together, i.e., choral reading

Read a section, then explain what you’ve read

Read a piece with different emotional tones or viewpoints — one angry, one happy, etc.

Trade tall tales, attend story-telling events and workshops

Research your name

What is Interactive Media?

freedomofexpression28 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:31:28 +0000

After reading this article, I concluded that Interactive Media is a vast array of things that allow people to interact while being able edit content via web, video games, puzzles, etc. Because multimedia was designed to respond to the user, two way communication and participation has to take place. Interactive Media is everywhere; from the small town homes, to the big city businesses! It has almost completely taken over the minds of people my age. No one really watches TV, listen to the radio, read, or even sleep anymore. I don’t know if I will get in trouble for saying this, but it’s addicting. It is like our own “technical” drug if you will. Below are some statistics that show that new media has slowly began to engulf the new generation.

New Media Usage                  18-24     25-34       35-54       55+

                                                      —–       —–       —–         —–

Blogs                                           29.6%   21.7%   15.5%   11.4%

Instant Messaging                  79.8%   68.3%   58.1%   43.1%

MP3/IPODS                              45.3%   29.9%   17.5%     6.7%

Satellite Radio                         12.2%   12.5%    9.5%       5.5%

Picture Phones                        30.6%   22.7%   14.1%    5.2%

Text Messaging                       58.3%   46.1%   27.6%    8.3%

TiVo/Replay TV                      17.0%   21.5%   14.6%    8.3%

Web Radio                                44.4%   42.6%   33.0%   13.5%

  In 2007, Microsoft Introduced the Interactive Media Manager, which provided the following customizable Web parts that target specific processes within the content production life cycle:

Media Library serves as a front end in which media content items in the digital asset management system are displayed as thumbnails.

Media Viewer displays information such as annotations and time codes in Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers format and offers sophisticated, built-in playback controls.

Media Annotator allows groups of people to collaborate on media assets through video annotations, digital inking and discussions.

Media Import facilitates the upload of media files and automatically launches associated workflows, such as information-gathering processes.

Media Cart provides an individualized area for storing media assets that people want to edit themselves or push out to appropriate editors.

From my research, I resolved that there are so many branches of Interactive Media and uses that it can’t be summed into a specific definition.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Advanced_Interactive_Media/A_Definition_For_Interactive_Media

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/apr07/04-15IMMPR.mspx

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200506/ai_n13647856/

What is Web 2.0?

freedomofexpression28 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:39:43 +0000

As stated in this article, Web 2.0 means different things to different people. To my understanding, Web 2.0 is a combination of local and global data. It’s like an update for the World Wide Web. Like Interactive Media, when using Web 2.0, communication is the key! Web 2.0 gives users access to blogs, wikis, even mashups which allow the computer to run faster. Also, it made way for the Read/Write web, like with the wikis where we can edit the content of the page. Web 2.0, which started out meaningless has become one of the biggest assets to the Internet as we know it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

In this article, I learned that Web 2.0 is considered an “attitude” rather than a technology. I agree with that statement. As previously stated, it means different things to different people. It is basically whatever you manipulate it into being. It is not just limited to blogs, wikis, or social bookmarking, but it focuses on the idea that the people who consume media, access the Internet, and use the Web shouldn’t passively absorb what’s available — rather, they should be active contributors. Web 2.0 is basically like the user’s voice. http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/archives/page9344.cfm

Web 2.0 is referred to as “technological evolution”. It went from being html pages, to well planned sites with content management systems. I believe that web 2.0 allowed people to get more creatively involved in what other people were doing. It opened a whole new world of communication by allowing the user to edit or comment on other people’s posts. Web 2.0 to me, is just a whole lot of Interactive Media.   http://www.rss-specifications.com/what-is-web-2.htm