This week: A look at ZooLoo

for this week's assignment, I decided to random;y "google" the term "free photo and and Media Sharing" and selected a service called ZooLoo. Signing up was the easy part, but one soon finds the site to be a little convoluted. They seem to want to have connectivity to everything else. This could be a good thing since it allows one to share posted between sites, and can even send a Twitter message when a new image or posting is made. Definitely a plus for the diehard web 2.0 aficionados. For educational use though, I think the myriad of options and related instructions required would make it more troublesome than useful (unless it was a class about web2.0 perhaps)
Uploading and annotating image posts is rather straightforward, and I had no problem at all getting a picture in there. Once you have more than one, it allows you to categorize them into "albums" any way you choose.
The service also provides a dashboard with Google searching, RSS feeds, weather, news and other widgets you can customize ( like I said, they want to be the all-in-one)
don't get me wrong though, I do sort of like this approach since in a previous post I referenced an article that presented the notion there being too much out there to keep track of. ZooLoo has taken some broad steps to not just be a image presentation site, but to become a user's homepage with interaction many of the popular web 2.0 utilities. I plan to spend more time there (because I want to), so may have an addendum to this posting.
you can see my "site here

some additional thoughts...
mulling it over, I do think that, with a good integration in lesson-planning, this site could be useful for education since it does provide a sort of "portal" to several tools. From this central location, a class can share media, link to a facebook site, twitter one another, and custom links to a bookmarking site can also be added. The portal can also support RSS content, so students could personalize their own "class portal" page.

Can MySpace make better writers?

I'm inclined to agree with the author that tools such as MySpace, Blogs etc. can foster better writing skills, especially if the student knows that peers will be viewing, or that it will be graded. Next time I see one of our English faculty, I will have to ask for an opinion. I do grade grammar in the courses I teach to some extent. These are are college success courses where a journal is kept by each student. This could fit very well in an online journal or personal blog too.
One thing I do disagree with the author about is the significance of creative abbreviation. it's not bad thing. But I believe there is time and place for it - that is when one is sending a text message. I feel it is important to distinguish for students, that this is not something to be randomly used, and especially not to be used in professional communication. Case in point; the text below is from a sale representative who contacted me as part of my job. This was the first communication I ever received from him:

Dear Brian,

(company) provides subtitling services for live streams and on-demand video content.
We would like to discuss partnering with Central New Mexico Community College in order to bring these capabilities to your target audience.

Please LMK who would be the best person to contact.

Am I just being nit-picky, or does he really "kill" his introduction with that "LMK"?

His company does provide a valuable and needed service for online learning. But I feel someone from his organization should talk to him about professional correspondence.

What's the Difference?

I'm a bit off-topic once again here. But I just retrieved some notes I took at a conference last year where we sort of defined the differences between web 2.0 and the previous -which we were calling web 1.0 :

Web 1.0:
-had static pages which were mostly code-based (HTML)
-for communication they just had feedback forms and guestbook signing
-information was basically one-way (publisher to you)

Web 2.0:
-the pages are dynamic, consisting of HTML, XHTML, Java, Flash etc.
-communication is not just back and forth, but multi-way. Publisher to you, you to publisher, you to world
-information is at minimum 2-way but usually mirrows the communication aspect goinf in multiple direction through the use of blogs, wikis and other tools.

we also came across Commoncraft, which you may find to be a great source for simple explanations of just about everything, including web 2.0 tools are. But be careful! it's easy to get "caught up" there and before you know it, you've been there for an hour..or even longer!

My FavoritUS Bookmarking page

I just randomly chose one and spent some time figuring out how it works. I have a few links now. Stop by and visit
I also placed it under "Great Links" there in the upper left corner.
For a random selection, I really like FavoritUs (except for the name..how exactly is that pronounced? )
For a clas it can cater to the creativity and individualism of the student since it doesn't just allow different layouts, but also allows for custom icons to identify each link. You can create one from their list, or you can upload your own created icons.
Using the site is fairly intuitive with clearly labeled tools and I really had no problems at all setting it up.
I can see this, and any other bookmarking site being very useful in education for collecting online references for a research project, collectong links a part of a study guide. or even as an element of a group activity where an instructor has the links set up, and assigns a group to synthesize the information and present it (along with the links) to the class.

New Note* Sharing it is apparently tough to do. I have to copy and paste emails into it to share it with friends. Apparently it's not a "public" bookmarking site.

web 2.0 technology

Is the word technologies actually the plural of the word technology? Arguably, the word "technology" describes a range of things, so is already both singular and plural. I digress though, since this post really isn't about that discussion (unless you want it to be)
Actually its more about how sometimes good things just fall into your lap.
Attached to an email today, I got this terrific (terrific used be a word used to describe something very frightening...but this isn't the case) PDF called "Using web 2.0 Technologies"


But I just can't figure out how to attach a PDF to Blog post..
So send me your email address if you'd like a copy.

Learning in the digital age

A few years ago I co-authored a small study of social presence in online learning. One of the things we saw was that, online, even the quietest student (who you would see only in the back row of a face-to-face class) felt a freedom in that online presence that allowed for much easier interaction. This alone, one could argue, is why learning in the digital age is better. We all feel an ease to posting online and that makes great strides in social communication.
But as you can see by the recent surge of cyber-bullying cases, there is a downside to the "psychological freedoms" that online presence allows. More than the punk who harasses in the hallway, such behavior is now seen by everyone. And true or not, harassment online can seem even more evil. As a result there is a corresponding increase in the hurt it can produce. Sadly, this has played out too many times already to bad results.
I would propose that whether is a group of 5th graders or a cohort of adult learners, it is a good idea to display a policy of zero tolerance. If for no other reason, it makes people aware of the potential and how to handle situations.

Click here to view a good resource article on cyber-bullying (or visit the following URL)

http://teaching-media-literacy.suite101.com/article.cfm/classroom_resources_to_teach_about_cyberbullying

Web 2.0 thoughts

One of the first things I did was to seek out what the consensus was on the "driving" forces of web 2.0 . one site, http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/web-2.0-websites lists the top 15 most popular web 2.0 websites. Among them are the more well-know names such as Twitter, Craigslist and Youtube. Curiously though, it does not list sites such as Facebook or linkdyn. Does this mean that the site author believes social networking is not an element of web 2.0? One might jump to that conclusion. But digging a bit deeper it appears that he used the term "web 2.0" out of convenience as a category name for one of several lists, all of which are likely components of web 2.0, such as "the 25 most popular Blogs," "top 20 Social Bookmarking site," and "the top 20 social networking site." There were many more, including job-hunting, Health, Travel etc.

So what's my point?

Perhaps reflecting partly on my own cynicism about the way society tries to neatly box concepts, I see a lot of unintentional misuse of the "web 2.0" label likely derived from the perceived need to mark clearly defined lines on "what is" and What isn't" web 2.0
The reality is that like the concept of "cloud computing" (which will no-doubt be as equally misunderstood and misused) web 2.0 is a natural trend of the evolution of the internet which is as likely to touch everything online to one degree or another. As soon as retailers figured out that thay could safely (?) retain your order info an compare your buying habits to others to shape marketing, web 2.0 was born. Certainly, there are still many sites where one cannot post comments, save personal data or create a profile and therefore may not be embracing the concepts of web 2.0, But I would argue that the mere ability to include "contact us" email too makes it part of the 2.0 trend.

your thoughts?