On the Right Track!

Made it! This has been a real whirlwind tour of Web 2.0. I look forward to revisiting many of the websites we covered and learning more about them and trying them out in the days and weeks to come.

What has surprised me the most about this program is that it has reignited my curiosity. I didn't realize how stale I had become! Now I'm more interested to follow that link or try that mashup or search for sites or bookmark favorites online. I'm also not afraid to ask my neices and nephews what they're doing online and to let them show me the "new stuff." I thought I was doing well -- remember why I named this blog "Mezzanine"? I thought I had a good start on Web 2.0. Ha! As Will Rogers said, "Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."

I think lessons I'll use most are the ones on RSS feeds, online productivity tools, wikis and bookmarking/tagging. I'll be inventing my job, for the most part, so I'll be doing a lot of research and designing my own processes. These applications will all be extremely useful. If I had stayed at Marymount after this week, I know I would have found uses for many of these tools in the Advisement and Transfer Center.

I loved the image generators and the Flickr tools, but I won't need them much except for fun. But I have to say that the "fun" sites inspired me to keep looking at each new lesson as an adventure. They kept me learning and they kept me refreshed and smiling.

I would wholeheartedly recommend that you repeat this program in professional development. I know that it has been the time element that has kept many from completing the tasks, but I think that time can be found in the weirdest places. It's worth it to persevere and continue to LEARN, especially when the world around us is moving on.

Thanks for providing this experience, these tools, and all the support that has encouraged me to take advantage of Web 2.0!

Linking Up

The social networking sites are pretty fascinating! And I think I'll be joining one in the next few months. I am moving to a rural area outside Knoxville, Tennessee, and I can foresee the need for communication with kindred spirits that might not be physically available in my immediate area.

Regardless of other sites I might decide to join, I'm going to become a member of Ficlets. I used to participate in lyric wheels and round robins until it got too hard for any of us to control who joined in. With Ficlets, that problem will mostly be avoidable!

My husband joined LinkedIn several months ago and has enjoyed that. One thing he discovered early on in his membership is that "headhunters" are mining LinkedIn for potential hires. Since most potential employers prefer that an applicant be currently employed, the profiles of LinkedIn members are helping them find appropriate people in the target field of business.

I look forward to setting up an account, but I'm going to wait for a few weeks to get that done!

Messaging

My siblings and I use IM on a sporadic basis to make joint decisions regarding our mom. Since we live in 2 different time zones and since each of us has a job that requires either total attention or being away from our desks for long stretches, we set an appointment time for the conversations. I suppose that defeats much of the purpose of the IM. I have only used it in other situations as a way to contact tech departments for hardware or software and follow their directions while they are standing by. Truly, I prefer the phone.

I can see how it would be a lot of fun between friends as a casual way to communicate, but to use it in an educational setting? I don't know. In our work in the Advisement and Transfer Center, we would probably be IMing the same information to different students over and over. This information is already available online and in hard copy at the Center, so that would be a waste of our time. Conversations with parents and students truly should be in person or over the telephone where attention to body language and/or voice inflection is imperative.

On the other hand, conversations between students and advisors could be greatly enhanced. Advisors might be more likely to IM than to extend their office hours. While face-to-face meetings are essential, any contact between advisor and advisees is encouraged.

The paper on texting in the classroom during lecture indicated that on-topic communication improved greatly over the three week period. I guess I just need to have more experience with IM before I can really find an educational application!

Podcasting

I discovered the wonderful world of podcasting when I first became obsessed with Bravo TV's reality show "Project Runway." Four seasons ago when the show had just hit the cable prime time line up, I fell in love with the fashion designers' mentor, Tim Gunn, and his candid yet eloquent commentaries about the contestants. I subscribed to iTunes in order to access Tim's weekly podcasts. Through trial and error, I learned how to download and listen. Loved it! Tim has become too busy to podcast in the last season or two and I do miss his observations. But podcasting is fun to listen to; it's like talk radio with no commercials.

I did find a few video podcasts while browsing through the assignment this week. One was an educator teaching piano teachers to podcast their lessons. The Music Teachers National Association believes that video podcasting missed lessons would help students keep up with the class.

Some audio podcasts I found and enjoyed were MuggleCast on PodcastAlley.com. Of course, this is for the Harry Potter fan. In spite of the fact that the book series has ended, the owners give out news of the fandom and of author J. K. Rowling and they even give "news reports" of what's happening in the Wizard World today. Another site was WillWriteForWine, a site where two authors discuss wine and/or the authoring process.

Vanderbilty University uses their audio podcasts to publicize the university calendar on a weekly basis. They have also used podcasts to record events from their Distinguished Speakers series and to record lectures by visiting professors so that those who are unable to attend will be able to hear the message as it was originally given. Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Business has a directory of podcasts that cover a variety of subjects, including "International Law and International Students." To revert to Harry Potter for a moment, Vanderbilt (and probably other universities) is using podcasts like Hermoine Granger used the time turner: to allow a student to be in two places at the same time. While this is not appealing to many students, it is a wonderful opportunity for others.

The audio podcast is not much different than audio taped lectures. The video podcast, I think, is a greater innovation and better opportunity to use the new technologies in education. It may even help improve a professor's ability to connect with his or her students.

Big Think vs. You Tube

I am so glad to have been introduced to Big Think! Within seconds of surfing around on it I was listening to Paul Muldoon discussing his creative process as he writes poetry, Deepak Chopra talking about what makes a happy life, and the editor of "Newsweek" trying to rationalize the rise of religious fundamentalism. This is so much more exciting and interesting than how many times Howard Ralley (whoever he may be) threw up or enjoyed intestinal distress while traveling in India -- which, unfortunately, was one of the first things I viewed on You Tube.

I have seen a number of You Tube videos that were forwarded to me by people who know better than I how to use it, and I've enjoyed those videos very much. Unfortunately, my own experience in trying to find material on You Tube reminded me that "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." (In fairness, I have to say that other nations are involved in the idiocy as well. What dreck!) I did perform a You Tube search on Marymount and on a few other topics and found some interesting and creative videos on a variety of subjects. Once again I was reminded that good content is available, I just have to search for it. I just wish I could have avoided Mr. Ralley and many others of his ilk before I got to the good stuff. I know I'll go back at my leisure and explore more thoroughly, but this first impression certainly sticks in my mind!

My first impression of Big Think was "thank goodness." There is a great deal of material on the site and all of it that I took time with was stimulating and refreshing, even if it came from a point of view I do not agree with.

I do have to admit that Big Think made me think of Woody Allen's short story "The Whore of MENSA." In it Woody Allen plays the hero, a hard-nosed detective (played by himself a la Humphrey Bogart) who discovers an escort service where for a price you can pay an attractive woman to sit with you and discuss Dickens or Hawthorne. Proust is more expensive.

Tag!

Being able to save my bookmarks to a web based site instead of on my less-than-mobile home computer is a great energy saver. As I prepare to move across country once again, I am happy to know that if my computer crashes I'll have those favorites waiting for me online. I won't have to go through the pain and frustration of finding them all again. I've already transferred most of my favorites onto my new bookmark page.

"Tagging" is a very nice sorting tool. It works well if you do it correctly. I did a search for "opera" tags on the Del.icio.us page and the search brought up over 41,800 sites... mostly for Opera browsing software! As I had intended the search to bring me sites on the subject of "opera" as in The Metropolitan Opera, I didn't really get what I wanted. There was a link to the Met site (saved by 149 people) but I had to slog through the software sites to find it. When I revised my search to include the tags "opera," "music" and "theatre", I got 314 links to sites featuring the subject I had wanted. I guess it's true: "garbage in, garbage out." Even more so than in the past, I have to be specific as to what I'm searching for.

I have gone back through my series of posts and added some tags to a few of them. I've tried to be creative (hard for me!) and add some that apply but are unexpected. Following some unexpected tags on the sites that turned up in my opera search has been a great way to broaden my tag vocabulary as well as my knowledge of the sites that are out there.

The web truly is a web!

WikiWiki

Well. There are wikis for everything! I dipped my toe in the wiki water and came up with several subjects that have them. I loved the WikiHow site. I could have learned "How To Apply Makeup as a Man" or "How To Grill Tri Tip Steak," among many other subjects. I'm sure I'll go back to that one to learn "How To See Rome in Three Days." WikiHow seemed to be an excellent use for wikis as it is user friendly, can be easily updated or edited, and covers many different areas of interest. There were wikis for celebrity "fandoms", wikis for Lotus auto enthusiasts, and wikis to find the answers to life's burning questions.

I read an article on the "Information Week" site about How to Use Wikis for Business. One comment grabbed my attention: "The real problem with the 'wikitorial' was that the Times sent a wiki to do a blog's job." The example of a news team trying to use wiki for an editorial page really brought home that these new tools I'm learning about aren't just applications that may or may not make life easier or more fun. They are different from each other and have specific uses, flexible as they may be. I just need to learn more about them all in order to use them correctly and to my advantage.

Mind Mapping

I haven't really thought of mind mapping since I was in school, but I visited the Bubbl.us site and was inspired all over again. I'm a firm believer in lists, but lists don't allow for much creativity, collaboration or sharing. Mind mapping does allow for all that and more. I could have imbedded my mind map in this blog for your amazement (and amusement, I'm sure!) but the topic was wrong. The map is on my home computer and it's pretty wild!

I've loved using the mind mapping at bubbl.us and I may try other mind mapping sites to see how they look. This is a tool I'll use in many different areas!

Politics on 2.0

I've been paying attention to my RSS feeds and keeping up with the news. Lo and behold! It seems that the social internet is an important factor in the Presidential election. Facebook, Flickr, YouTube... they are all focusing the attention of young voters in various interesting ways. It seems that politicians are taking hold of all these new interactive tools and engaging young voters on their own ground. There are a few serious drawbacks, but the numbers of those responding to the candidates' on line efforts are pretty amazing!

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this happening? This seems to me to be parallel to the Kennedy/Nixon debates, the first to be broadcast on TV if I remember correctly. That changed American politics forever. Only time will tell if this new internet interest boils down to actual votes, but what a step into the fast lane!

Inventing the Manual

This "thing" was so much fun it was hard to decide where to stop! I made logos and signs and all sorts of great images. I like this book cover because I feel like I've got one of these sitting on my desktop!

What a great tool for illustrating a point!

Updatable Lists

The use for Google Docs that springs immediately to my mind concerns an annual event on campus: the Marymount Career Fair and Expo. While preparing the final report on the event, I was looking for a way to suggest that the Transfer Center and Public Relations coordinate their efforts.

This was the first year that we enlisted the help of the Public Relations department and Institutional Development. It would have been very helpful to have a central "invitation" list so that we could all see who had been invited, what their profession is, and whether or not they responded with a yes or a no. Google Docs would be a great place to store that updatable list! We could also invite the club sponsors (Pre-Med Club, Business Club, etc.) to let us know who they had recently asked to speak at their club so we wouldn't ask the same people for more of their time. The sponsors could also have access to the list.

Google Docs would also be a great place to store assignments for Student Workers that assist in the Transfer Center. That way we have a running list of things to be done as well as a record of when they were completed.

Experiment for Extra Points

This was hard for me to figure out, but here goes. This is my experimental Google Doc embedded in my blog!





Cool! I don't know how to adjust the size of it, but at least you can use the scroll bars. This is pretty neato.

Baylor University Blog

I realized last night that I've been reading a blog for a long while now and didn't even know it! I just thought of it as my regular email from Baylor University, my alma mater. They email a link to the Baylor Proud blog and I click on it and go read what's going on back in Waco.

The Baylor blog is a great public relations tool as well as a news magazine for alumni.Take a look at all the things they feature by going here: http://homepages.baylor.edu/baylorproud/
It has a beautiful format and lots of info!

Educational Blogging

Blogs seem to me to be an obvious tool for teaching English composition, any of the creative writing courses, and journalism but I sure would have loved to subscribe to some math blogs back in my university days! Just as a support tool and discussion forum, a math blog would have been fantastic. My friends and I had the equivalent of the time, the regular meeting at "our" table in the student union for coffee and screaming.

I would love to read a regular blog from some of the students attending semesters in London. Some of the students who recently returned from the Fall term at Regent's had some wonderful experiences, including travel, that I think other Marymount students would find inspiring and enlightening.

Institutional Research might wish to use a blog to relate information to Administration, Faculty and Staff. One of the tremendous advantages of this sort of blog would be the linking of selected material directly back to the primary sources that are web-based. I think it would be a great fit for selecting information and interpreting it for the Marymount community while allowing a forum for comments, questions, and discussion of findings. Also, as we are all involved in the implementation of the college's strategic plan, blogs might be a good way to share assessment tools and ideas for action plans.

I can't wait to see what others come up with for this topic! Are any faculty members already using blogs in their course work?

Just a Report for #8

While at home, I've been researching sites to add to my reader account on my home computer. Here are a few of my recent subscriptions:

National Women's Business Council

Women Business Enterprise National Council

Small Business Association

All-Business.com's specialty site for women-owned business

I've also added a gadget to my reader that will search for more blogs regarding women owned businesses. Having continuous, timely and broad information on this topic is very important to me. It's wonderful to discover how these "fun" tools can truly provide valuable resources!

Feed Me!

I must admit that I spent very little time on this one as Mary had taught me about this in her seminars last term. Because of those lessons, I already had Bloglines set up on my office home page.

One of the feeds I subscribe to is "CollegeInfo.com" which has great articles about choosing schools and majors. This is very useful to us in the Transfer Center as we're always looking for new ways to help our students make these all-important decisions. Another related site is "Career College Central" for students making other choices. I also subscribe to "Librarian's Internet Index" for pertinent information.

Other than those, I can get my daily news fix by reading the feeds from CNN, ABC News, and ABC Entertainment. To keep my hand in the business field (my major and previous life) I subscribe to Fast Company, a young cutting-edge business magazine.

Last night on my home computer I set up Google Reader and played with that for a while. I think I'm going to like it better than Bloglines. The tab feature at the top is excellent for organizing material, and I think the layout is easier to read than Bloglines.

I took part of the tutorial from Technorati. That was a hoot for several reasons, but it's also very informative. I'll be exploring their tab feature to search for the business things I want to have on my home computer.

Onward!

Also for Number 7

This was made with Jigsaw, also from Big Huge Labs. I like this site. The applications are really a lot of fun and usually turn out wonderfully. Of course, it's also a major distraction!

I made a trading card with a photo of one of my dogs, but I'll hang on to that for now!

My Moody Mosaic

This is the mosaic I made using Mosaic Maker, part of Big Huge Labs in Flickr Toys. Click on the image for a full page view!

Read The Fine Print

After longer than I care to admit, I finally saw the magic words "I Accept the Terms of Service" on the photo upload page and checked the little box. Geez. I get the feeling that 2.0 is going to be very difficult for me if I don't read the fine print!

Anyway. The photo that I was finally able to upload (cast your gaze to the left) is a photo I took of the Pecos River near Pecos, Texas, my hometown. I love this picture for several reasons.

First of all, the river actually has water running in it. During my junior high school years, the state of New Mexico dammed the river on their side of the border. The river on the Texas side was reduced to a trickle. Texas eventually won the ensuing lawsuit, but while New Mexico controlled the flow of the river we got used to seeing a mostly dry river bed. See all the greenery in the picture? I hardly ever saw that while I lived nearby. That's one reason I had to stop and take the photograph.

Another reason is that the picture was taken from a new bridge, one that was constructed only yards away from an old trestle bridge that had recently been demolished. The old bridge, Sullivan's Bridge, was the favorite hangout of my group of friends from the moment we could drive the nine miles away from town on our own. It was such a fixture in our lives that my friend Kimberly, the editor of our high school annual, used a photo of the bridge for the end pages in the yearbook. I'm glad Sullivan's Bridge is preserved that way.

Finally, if I had taken just a few steps to my left while taking this picture I would have been West of the Pecos. Yep, Pecos is the first town located literally west of the Pecos River on Interstate 20. It is where a replica of the Jersey Lilly stands proudly next to the West of the Pecos Museum and recalls the time of "hanging judge"Roy Bean and of Clay Allison, the gentleman gunslinger who was killed in a shootout in the Orient Saloon - the building that now houses the museum. Pecos, Texas, is also the Home of the World's First Rodeo. (Sorry Prescott, Arizona, but we documented ours in 1883. We know you know that, so the moral victory is ours!)

That's probably a lot more than you wanted to know about Pecos and this photo! But there is a lot of history in Pecos and some of it is my own. This photo reminds me of all that and takes me home for a while.

The Hurrier I Go, The Behinder I Get!

Wow! I didn't think I'd been out of town for quite this long. When I returned to Project 2.0 this morning, I realized just how far behind I'm getting.

I was in Tennessee for a few days visiting family. Then I came home for just long enough to pack another suitcase and grab a couple of hours' sleep before I was back at the airport. I'm home again after a nice week in sunny (well, only partly cloudy) Mexico ready to continue down the path to technological enlightenment. I guess I'd better stop writing about it and get moving!

See you in the blogs!

The "Between" Places

The mezzanine is usually the level between a building's entrance and its upper floors. It can also be an extra floor of intermediate size that's been inserted between two floors of regular size. "Mezzanine" can even represent a financial strategy involving subordinated debt -- a level of financing above equity and below senior debt. Whatever. It's in the middle, in between.

The name of this blog is The Mezzanine because that's where I am with Web 2.0. I know enough about it to know that I know very little about it. I can't wait to get started!

Let the learning begin!