Take a break and go a walk for 15-30 minutes write a short narrative on the experience.
It is the last Sunday of the school holidays and the sun is shining, warming the otherwise crisp air. Lake Wendouree in Ballarat has been empty for the last couple of years. However, recent rains and the diversion of treated storm water into the lake means there is now water once again. I therefore decided to take the opportunity for a stroll along the recently upgraded pathways alongside the lake in order to witness the transformation for myself.
When the lake was dry, you could walk across it. It now has large pools of water and is slowly filling, a process which will take many years. Water birds, swans and ducks have returned and were enjoying gliding through the water. The lake is not deep enough for boating yet, however a keen canoeist was paddling through the shallows. People including families, couples and singles, are out to enjoy the Sunday sunshine by taking a leisurely stroll, walking the dog, jogging or cycling along the pathways around the lake.
At the playground area, children play happily on the playground and squeal in delight as they are pushed higher and higher on the swings. Families congregate around the BBQ areas and picnic benches, and the aroma of salty fish and chips and sausages cooking on the BBQ combine to make my mouth water.
Evidence of our sporting culture can be seen as families kick a footy, fly a Frisbee or play a game of cricket, enjoying precious time together in the sunshine and great outdoors before the beginning of another school term and working week.
Finally, I join the queue for the ice cream van and enjoy the creamy taste as I attempt to eat it before it melts all over my fingers. Then, my time for relaxation and reflection comes to an end. I head back home, back to the computer. While the families enjoy their last hours of holidays, I begin planning for the busy term ahead.
Dry Lake Wendouree in March 2007
A Full Lake Wendouree
Exercise 8.2: The avalanche of applications self-interview
What have been the benefits of doing this course?
I have really enjoyed the collaborative nature of this course. I have participated in many of the weekly chats, exploring the different tools, such as Interact, Webex, Etherpad and Skype. I have engaged in individual chats with various classmates throughout the course in order to support each other in understanding the topics, assignments, and venting our frustrations at times.
I have enjoyed experimenting with different web services and have become more confident to explore different sites. I had never heard of many of the applications before. While some sites have potential for education, many others do not. However, I have enjoyed the opportunity to experiment and reflect on each site, and learn about the endless possibilities.
I have enjoyed creating my first blog, including learning how to improve the visual aspects and add pictures. I have also enjoyed reading the work of others, which has often helped me to engage with the topics and come up with ideas.
It has also been beneficial to hear the opinions and ideas of others. I could not see a use for Twitter, apart from the senseless ramblings of people I’ve got no interest in and a promotional tool for egos and businesses. However, after discussing the possibilities of Twitter as a professional development tool with my POD, I learnt that it can be used to link with experts in areas of interest, therefore being useful for professional reading.
What have been the challenges of completing this course?
At times I have been frustrated when I haven’t understood what is being asked or what the expectations are. I am traditionally a visual learner, I need to see or watch something being done in order to understand how to do it. Therefore I have found it difficult to follow some of the instructions without a visual representation.
I have particularly found the assignment 2 to get my head around. I found it difficult to understand the instructions and the expectations, and what it is we really had to do. I would have liked the opportunity to discuss this during one of our weekly meetings in order to clarify things, but this was not to be. Also, we initially had some trouble contacting POD members but this has been resolved and all are now on board and collaborating and contributing. The POD group has helped to clarify the issues and give me some direction.
There have also been technology issues:
I was unable to participate in the LC-MOO chat. I was logged in, but was kicked out before the session began. Ken tried giving me a new log in, but I was still unable to get back in. This was disappointing because I had not used LC-MOO before and it was a completely different environment. I was looking forward to learning about it.
When using Skype in a large group, the audio was poor and I was unable to understand a lot of the conversation. However, I have since used Skype in one-on-one conversations and as a chat tool with other members of the group and really like using it.
How will I use what I have learnt in this course in the classroom?
I would like to set up blogs with students as a tool for reflective learning. I would like to use wikis or etherpad as a collaborative authoring tool. Skype could also be useful for setting up collaborative learning tasks with other small schools within our cluster. Probably the site I can see the most potential for would be the Ning, where students can set up blogs, create forum discussions, share photos and videos, and engage in chat all on the one site. Ultimately I would like to create a site for students to access time tables, weekly planners, resources to assist with their projects and assignments, webquests and homework. Now I just need the time to set this up!
Comment on the self interview
Teachers use reflection to evaluate their teaching and learning all the time. We are taught reflective techniques at uni and expected to engage in reflective practices as part of our professional practise. The VIT (Victorian Institute of teaching) requires all beginning teachers to undergo a series of reflective activities to demonstrate their reflective practice.
While I have never really written myself a formal self interview, I am always mentally asking questions of myself and my students in relation to planning, teaching, learning and assessment. Self questioning and self interviewing are beneficial tools of reflective practice. It is a good way to gather ones thoughts and access ones goals.
Exercise 8.3: Data portability, FOAF and the Semantic Web
1. I watched the Youtube Video at http://www.foaf-project.org/community.
I thought it was quite funny and very true, if a bit unnecessarily long! Everytime we sign up to a new site, we have to input the same personal information over and over again which can become rather than tedious. It would be therefore beneficial to use a FOAF system which makes it easier to share information. However, I would want the user to have the ultimate control over their personal information and who gets access to it.
2. Is data moving between Facebook and Twitter a good thing?
No. I have had a Facebook account for a year or so and use it to communicate with friends and family. I signed up for Twitter purely to experience it for this course. I would not want random people from Twitter having access to my personal details from my Facebook page. It means the user has little control over who, where and when their information is made avaliable.
3. How does the FOAF tag form part of the semantic web and web services via social networks?
I read many articles and websites about FOAF and the Semantic Web, but I found the terminology and concepts very difficult to undersand. Because of my lack of comprehension of the topic, I was unable to understand what the question was asking, or how to answer it. However, I have endeavoured to define the terminology in order to try to answer the question, as follows:
According to Wikipedia, "Data portability is the ability for people to reuse their data across interoperable applications - the ability for people to be able to control their identity, media and other forms of personal data (Wikipedia. 2009).
According to the Semantic Web website, "FOAF (friend of a friend) is an RDF (Resource Description Framework: a family of specifications for a metadata model), which describes people and their social network in a semantic way" (Semantic Web. 2008).
The Semantic Web is "a web of data." "It is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites" (Semantic Web. 2008).
I think what this all means is that users can put their details into one site, and create tags to other sites through the Semantic Web, which turns the information into a format that all web services and social networking sites can read. This would illiminate the need for repeating the process of signing up to accounts or giving personal information. Instead, users would just create a FOAF tag so that the information would be shared.
References:
Semantic Web. (2008). FOAF. Accessed on 25/10/09 from http://semanticweb.org/wiki/FOAF
Semantic Web. (2009). Main Page. Accessed on 25/10/09 from http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wikipedia. (2009). DataPortability. Accessed on 25/10/09 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataPortability
Exercise 8.4: Aggregation, Syndication and the Social Engine.
a)
RSS According to Wikipedia, "RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
Aggregation means to group several things together. "In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates [or groups together] syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator
According to InvestorWord.com, syndication is "the supplying of information or content for simultaneous publication in several periodicals or web sites."
RSS, aggregation and syndication have changed the nature of the web by allowing up to date information to be gathered and sent to multiple subscribers, meaning that users do not have to continually log in to access information.
According to Wikipedia, "the user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds."
Because I have a Blogger and Gmail account, I decided to experiement using Google Reader. It automatically transferred the Blogs I am following into the reader, making it easy for me to receive updates from these Blogs.
From what I could understand from the Digg Labs page, Stacks and Swarms refers to how new and popular feeds are presented so that they can be identified, although I could not quite follow the animations or understand exactly what this meant.
b) del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows users to bookmark favourite sites online and share this information with others. Because it's online, the bookmarked sites can be accessed from any computer. This can save time searching for information when it can be saved and accessed from the bookmarking site at anytime. This is a great tool for teachers when planning units of work, because they are able to create a collaborative list of appropriate sites.
According to the del.icio.us help pages, "tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Delicious to help you organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but you choose them yourself and they do not form a hierarchy. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and you can always rename or delete the tags later."
c) http://www.go2web20.net/ is a website which contains a comprehensive catalogue of Web 2.0 tools and applications. Users can access a range of collaborative tools easily. Rather than searching using a search engine, which searches pages for keywords and often finds a lot of irrelevant or useless information, Go2Web20 allows users to click on categories, and it lists appropriate sites that provide the services you were looking for. It seems a far more direct way of finding providers of relevant services, and I can see this kind of search facility will become popular amongst Web 2.0 users.
d) "Elgg is an open source social engine which powers all kinds of social environments - from education to business and sports." Itseems to be a very comprehensive site. It allows users and organisations to create their own social networking application. Some of the collaborative tools avaliable include Blogs, Microblogs, Embeded files, and the sharing of files including photos, word documents, audio files, videos and PDFs, as well as many other applications. It looks to provide many of the services that many other providers, including Facebook and Ning, already provide, but looks to be a very polished addition. It seems to have better security controls and does not have the stigma attached to it that Facebook has, so therefore would be an atractive alternative to many business and education workgroups.
