Lea Ann’s Web 2.0 Class Experience

• Read classmates’ blog posts and responded to some
• Blogged myself
• Participated in Bb Discussion Board
• Further developed marketing plan for Produsage project with Bryan, Chris and Barbara
• Began Twitter and Facebook marketing campaign for the site
• Week after next: initiate emails to online students, network at New Graduate Student Orientation for the site
• Signed up for Produsage projects
• Reviewed several Produsage projects

First… if you keep on bloggin’, I’ll keep readin’! I have so enjoyed reading everyone’s blogs and I intend to continue blogging myself. I can’t see myself not checking FriendFeed after the class ends, so keep me up to date on what’s going on!

Second…this class has made me look at Blackboard in a whole new light. With all the cool tools and gadgets and communication sites, it really makes Blackboard look archaic and points out its flaws. It reminds me of the saying that made the news last year – you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. I’m just sayin’.

Third…I’m going to spend some of the free time I’ll have in the next couple of weeks exploring the projects a bit more. Borrowing Gina’s metaphor, we’ve been sprayed with a firehose of information and tools. Now it’s time to sort it all out and figure out what works in our lives. I sort of wish this were a full semester class so we could have more time to explore and play around with Web 2.0 and do a little more collaboration. I think for a first-time run of a class, this was pretty good. Thanks to Vanessa for the great experience and thanks to all of you classmates as well!

So what will I take away from this class and what will I do with it?

First, I realized how much I did NOT know about Web 2.0 technologies – I also realize there’s a lot more to learn. There was no way to intimately learn all the applications we explored, but it was enough to filter out the ones I want to pursue more.

As far as my future plans go…I’ve talked to a few colleagues about this and I’m very excited about it – I’m going to develop a Web 2.0 summit! I managed the Florida Government Technology Conference for the past few years, and the decision was made over the winter to do away with the large tradeshow format. Not to mention, it just about killed the staff for those five days. It was a major production to get everything set up, in addition to dealing with technology issues in the 30-year-old civic center. Sort of ironic.

So, we are restructuring FGTC into three smaller themed summits, scaling down the exhibit area, and focusing more on educational sessions and less on product pitches. The first summit is a cyber security summit in October, and this class inspired me to consider a Web 2.0 summit. The possibilities are endless in terms of what to include. I’ve got a lot to think about and not a lot of time to do it. It won’t be on a large scale like Web 2.0 Expo or anything – in fact we are only looking at 150-200 physical attendees and webcasting the event. But Tallahassee needs to have something people can participate in, without having to drive 5 hours to Orlando.

I’ll continue to blog about my adventures in planning this summit, if you’re interested. And I would appreciate any input you may have.

It’s been a very educating and fun six weeks with all of you. Hope to keep in touch, at least through Web 2.0!

The Marines has banned all social media tools effective immediately for one year. While I can see their point to a degree, just think of what this will do to soldiers that have been accustomed to having social media at their fingertips…

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/04/marines.social.media.ban/index.html

Wow, what a day.

OK, how could I let this class end without yet another car story? Don’t know if you recall, but during my first week of class I had the saga of the truck tows. I found myself transportation-challenged today as well.

I’ve been exploring new technologies with all of you and wanted to find a Twitter alternative. My problem was that in most cases, Mac OS 10.5 was required. My current OS was 10.4, and I had not upgraded (and bear in mind that 10.6 comes out in a month or so). Some of my colleagues are using Nambu, a tool that aggregates tweets and is supposed to incorporate FriendFeed and Facebook. Disappointingly, the current beta version disables FF and FB.

So in my quest for Nambu and the opportunity to try other technologies, I attempted to install OS 10.5. Attempted. The installation failed. And the disk was stuck in the drive. And after I got the disk out, the computer wouldn’t boot up. The only reason for a lack of a complete meltdown was the fact that I turned in my produsage paper last night and for the remainder of our class, it’s web-based. It would be really bad if my computer died but I could finish the class.

I panicked. The tech guy at work is not very proficient at Macs but is incredibly nice. Yeah, well nice wasn’t very helpful. I called a friend who I thought could help and he said “come on over.”

Here’s where my transporation issue came in: I have no car. The hubby had it and I was begging for a ride from anyone I could find. One suggested that we take the bus and she would go with me. OK, we’re in Florida, in August. I’m NOT going to stand at the campus bus stop that comes around every 20 minutes in the summer. I finally found someone to give me a lift.

My friend was able to back up my files (I can see you rolling your eyes now) and get the operating system installed.

So here I sit, with the new (soon to be old) operating system, using Nambu. I really hope that in subsequent versions that FriendFeed and Facebook are working within it.

As I said…what a day…

• Read through blog posts and responded to some
• Blogged myself
• Worked with Bryan on Produsage Project 2
• Accepted invitations from some classmates to participate in their Produsage Project
• Participated on Blackboard Discussion Board
• Explored Second Life (and we all know how that turned out!)

I’m not much of a sharer.

I am the youngest of three, and am WAY younger than my two siblings – 10 and 14 years, to be exact. We didn’t have many years of growing up together, so I grew up pretty much as an only child. I wasn’t forced to share that much at home because it wasn’t necessary.

Now that I’m grown, I’m not all that into sharing either. Don’t ever ask if you can share my fries. I hate it when someone picks something off my plate. That’s just one of those strange things about me.

As far as sharing content and information, it’s hasn’t been a problem. So far. I’ve really enjoyed collaborating and sharing in this class, it’s been fun. However…I’m not so sure that I will be able to embrace sharing down the line when I move on into our chosen profession. I work at a university, so the intellectual property ownership issue is a daily occurrence. We make sure the courses we build are not accessible unless you pay for it. We issue “cease and desist” warnings for those that copy our material.  This is clearly not in the spirit of Web 2.0. And for me personally, I’m not sure that I would be OK with putting my heart and soul into producing a product, only to see it end up on someone else’s site in a Web 2.0 form.

I know times are changing, and you can’t fight it. But for me, I don’t know if I’m ready to start sharing.

I came across an article on Time Magazine’s website about Microsoft’s Bing search engine replacing Yahoo’s search engine, rather than a full buyout (I’ll say that was a good move on Microsoft’s part). Within the article there is a link to a site that will compare in split-screen mode the results of the same search on Bing and on Google. I tried my name and Google’s results were much better than Bing’s results.

Article link:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1913841,00.html

And if you want to go directly to the comparison site:

http://www.bing-vs-google.com/

I thought of this a couple of days ago and it took a couple of days to remember all three of these application names. Can you say, “Information Overload?”

I found it odd to come across three applications that rhymed – we learned about Ning from a couple of our classmates’ Produsage projects. Jing is a free, simplified version of Camtasia, a screen capture application, and I’ve experimented with it a bit (works great for roughing out a screen capture). Bing is a search engine that I haven’t explored that much. I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft, so I’m not sure if I will gravitate toward it.

Do you think any other applications will come out that rhyme? I did a little Googling on this (not Binging) and here’s what I found:

• Fling – adult personal ads
• Ping – tool used to test whether a host is reachable through an IP network (from Wikipedia)
• Zing – a consumer technology and services company that focuses on always-connected audio and entertainment devices, now part of Dell (from Zing website)

There’s certainly room for expansion for applications that rhyme with these. But it’ll take some Bling to get them going. (sorry I had to say that)

I didn’t want to edit the previous post because you have to get a sense of the adventure I had in Second Life today…

As I commented in the other post, I finally figured out that “Change your name” was an option, not a command, before you permanently selected your name. I selected “Snowpaw” from the drop-down menu, since it reminded me of my babies. I filled out the rest of the fields, downloaded the application and logged in, curious to see what this was all about.

Now comes the interesting part…

I am walking around, flying, doing all the stuff a novice would do. And for some strange reason, I selected “Edit > Take Off Clothing.” Did I try removing one article of clothing? Oh NO. I removed all of my clothing. A split second later, I panicked. I’m standing in the middle of Second Life, with my name clearly marked, NAKED!  What’s worse is that I realized at that point that the avatar I had created was a male. I could see a couple of other people there and I was praying that no one from the class would come in, because I couldn’t figure out how to put my clothes back on. I’m walking around, still naked, and finally dragged down to “Edit > Appearances” and was able to get some clothes back on, and change from Male to Female. OK who goes into Second Life and the first thing they do is take their clothes off?? Apparently me.

Hopefully this will be a little more meaningful the next time I log in.

I hope this made you laugh, because I had to reapply my makeup after sharing this with my colleagues.