Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World. Trey Martindale and Clif Mims. Advanced Learning Center Workshop on November 18th, 2008

Why Collaborate?

What is Web 2.0? (or "What was Web 1.0?")

  1. Tim O'Reilly's classic article
  2. YouTube video explanation
  3. Wikipedia entry
  4. Seven Things You Should Know About... blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS, course management, personal response systems, e-books, Creative Commons, open source, etc.
  5. Common Craft videos: short video explanations of many tools and processes.
  6. http://del.icio.us/martindale/web2.0 -- my Web 2.0 links
  7. The 2007 Web 2.0 Awards
  8. http://www.go2web20.net/ -- massive collection of services.

Social Bookmarking (or, "Why we'll soon all be librarians").

Course-related collections:

Blogs and blogging (or, "I think I have something to say")

Purpose: for documenting processes, keeping date-stamped records, helping people connect, and generating ideas and innovations. Blogs are typically "individual-centric" whereas wikis are generally used for groups building a common resource (such as an encyclopedia).

A blog can take the form of a newspaper, newsletter, journal, public forum, external brain, etc.

Blog affordances and features include:

  • dated entries, archived content, and commenting
  • easily publishing a sophisticated site with search, archives, formatting.
  • auto-syndication with RSS.
  • images, audio, video.

Blog examples

Free blog services (they host)

  1. http:edublogs.org
  2. http://wordpress.com
  3. http://blogger.com

Free blog software (you download and host)

  1. Wordpress.org
  2. Moveable Type

What is RSS and why is it important?

Sample RSS Feed

What is an aggregator, and why should I use one?

Podcasting (or, "Is this microphone on?")

  • A podcast is a show--a series of recorded audio or video posted to the web, and retrievable as a subscription (RSS feed).
  • large collection of podcasting resources
  • iTunesU is a hosted collection of university podcasts.

Content Management (or, "Get your stuff together")

All these are free, and must be hosted on a server:

  1. Drupal
  2. Plone
  3. Joomla
  4. CivicSpace

Video Sharing (or, "Ready for my close-up")

  1. YouTube
  2. TeacherTube
  3. videojug.com videojug--eric says it is great.

Social Networking (or, "Get to know me")

  1. Facebook
  2. MySpace
  3. Linked In
  4. ELGG

Image and Slide Sharing (or, "I can bore you with slides online now!")

  1. Flickr
  2. Slideshare
  3. Picasa

News

Collaborative Writing Tools

  1. Zoho: collaborative everything.
  2. Google Docs collaborative word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Wikis (or, "Can't we all just get along?")

What are wikis and how do they work?

  • Video: Wikis in Plain English
  • A wiki is a piece of server-based software that enables the user to edit a web page via the web browser. There are many variations in terms of types of wikis. A common feature is the easy creation of new wiki “pages” by combining words to form a web link to a new document. Most wikis include a basic shorthand so that users can create web documents without needing to know HTML.
  • The most well-known and largest example of a wiki is probably Wikipedia—a vast web-based encyclopedia. Wikipedia is being developed and managed by a large group of vigilant contributors from around the globe. It is the largest written "document" in the history of civilization.

Here's a nice presentation by Brian Lamb introducing wikis. In a wiki, of course.

There are many other types of wikis.

  1. Wikipedia
  2. Wikibooks
  3. Wikiquote
  4. Wiki-How. How to do stuff.
  5. Psychology Wiki
  6. Martindale course wiki
  7. EduTech Wiki, all about educational technology, from the Unversity of Geneva
  8. Sloan-C wiki about online teaching and learning. Fantastic resource.
  9. http://www.complexive.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page -- a wiki used to organize a corporate e-learning conference in Nov. 2007.

General articles about using a wiki

  1. Seven things you should know about wikis
  2. Executive's Guide to Blogs, Wikis, and RSS (PDF)
  3. Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not
  4. Wikipatterns: a wiki book about patterns of how wikis are adopted, and how people respond. Very interesting.

Bonus: papers from the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis

Wikis as tools for teaching, collaboration, project management, and knowledge management

  1. Case Study: Using a Wiki for Documentation and Collaborative Authoring
  2. Growing Collection of Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories from Bill Ives
  3. Using wikis on an intranet, from the British Council.
  4. Wikis a disruptive innovation, (about knowledge management
  • wiki as an alternative to email (learners put links to their blogs or resources on a wiki rather than email them all to you)
  • shared to-do lists
  • writing an book or procedure manual using a wiki - distributed error checking

Problems: Security, vandalism, and version control

  1. Wikis are easy to vandalize, and even easier to fix.
  2. Some wikis enable users to receive email or RSS notifications of changes. Or to create a "watch list" of pages.
  3. Soft security vs. hard security.

How to start a wiki

  1. Setting up a wiki, from opencontent.org
  2. How to Start a Wiki, from wikibooks.org.

Choosing a wiki

  1. Wiki Matrix -- one site to compare them all.
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

Free hosted wikis:

Free host-yourself wikis

  • Mediawiki. This software runs Wikipedia, so obviously it can handle a large load.
  • PMwiki. I use this.

Companies selling "enterprise" social software services

  1. http://www.xerceo.com/web/guest/about
  2. Atlassian Confluence
  3. Google Sites (formerly JotSpot)

Handy wiki tools

  1. http://diberri.dyndns.org/wikipedia/html2wiki/ -- convert HTML to wiki markup.
  2. Tiddlywiki--your personal nonlinear notebook.

Mashups

  1. Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. Article by Brian Lamb in Educause Review
  2. Wikipedia definition
  3. What is a mashup (video interview and transcript