I have read through the tutorial Wiki Wonders, which describes a wiki as follows:

A hosted service that allows you to create a webpage for free with shared online editing for group working. This means that anyone you have given permission to can access the site and add/edit/save the wiki. You can also track the changes made by others. Wikis make excellent Intranet subsitutes, are a useful asset for project management or creating a report with multiple authors and for adding extra information through hyperlinked pages. Providers include PBwiki and Wetpaint. The name originates from the Hawaiian for ‘quick’. The most famous example of a wiki is Wikipedia.

The WebQuest asks the question, What is the main difference between a Weblog and a Wiki?  I would say that a weblog could be used primarily for recording information in journal style from day to day.  A wiki on the other hand facilitates collaborative working, for example project management and report writing, because it can be easily edited by everyone involved.  

I found the  article by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb on http://www.oreillynet.com more useable than a webinar I watched – PJB-100 PBWiki Fundamentals.  The instructions on the webinar are not clear and it isn’t suitable for a beginner.  The article is much more user-friendly as it can be printed and read at a reasonable pace.

The instructions on Moodle were not  helpful either because the website pbwiki.com seems to have changed since they were written.  The Moodle instructions also assume prior knowledge and I do not think that they are suitable for unsupervised learning.

Fortunately however Ian was around and he helped me to set up a basic wiki.  The URL is http://www.doowyam.pbwiki.com.  It is a test site showing how a wiki could be used for library marketing.  On this, I created pages, inserted links, and added a sidebar with links to a page within the wiki and to other websites.

Week 4 – Photosharing

I’ve uploaded this picture from my own files.  I took it when Sarah and Scott visited my mother in August 2005.  We crossed the railway line behind The Orchards and walked about 2 miles to Flint Castle and back.

I copied and pasted this photo from the Internet.  It was on a website showing other people’s photographs.

………….

Task 2 : You have a choice this week – you can either set up your own free Flickr account  (you will be re-directed to Yahoo) and upload some photos to it. If you do, tag them as ‘Web Quest’ so they can be viewed easily. You might like to watch this short tutorial first.

OR

Practice downloading photos onto your H:Drive using the ITW card readers. Experiment with your blog and add a picture to your reflective post for this week using the WordPress Image Gallery or the Flickr Insert Tool .

This text was copied and pasted from the WebQuest.  It’s in red because the next line of the text was in red.  There doesn’t seem to be a way to reformat it to black and white.  I am actually trying to “add a picture to my reflective post using the WorPress Image Galley or the Flickr Insert Tool.

I tried to upload a picture from Sarah’s website, but another picture - a scenic view - appeared instead.  This may be because of copyright.

I have now registered my weblog with Andrew by e-mailing him the url and I have said that it can be viewed by all the library staff.  I’m aware that my blogs are descriptive rather than reflective:  I’m using my weblog to record what I have done in order to reinforce the learning process.  So here’s a little bit of reflection.  

On the whole I don’t really feel that web 2.0 has anything to do with me or my life.  l don’t think blogging is relevant to me as I don’t see the need to tell the world at large about myself and what I do from day to day.  Maybe you need an obscure interest that you aren’t able to share with anyone you know.   Or perhaps you need something very dramatic to be happening in your life which would interest other people.  Maybe it’s a generational thing; younger people generally seem to have a lot more spare time to do this sort of thing.  Or maybe I’ll be converted and eating my words in a few weeks’ time! 

I like Flickr best because it’s a way of sharing photographs with friends and family, instead of sending huge files by email.  I have also used Delicious to save videos of my neice, which I found on You Tube .  If I want to I can show these to friends by sending them the link or logging into my weblog at home.  I have also published my first blog so that it can be checked for progress by the administrators.

Week 4 Photosharing

I had already set up a Flickr account because Ian asked me to work through the handout he had written on Flickr to see if it was okay.  I created 2 sets of holiday photos:  USA 2006 and Turkey 2007.  I will be able to create one more set, and then I will have to subscribe to the site.

Yesterday I started going through the WebQuest again to remind myself of what it’s all about.  I went over weeks 1 and 2 and read through the glossary; some of terms are beginning to make more sense.  I had another look at Youtube, Facebook and Flickr.  I still can’t see the point of Facebook; it seems to me to be for rather desperate people!  I received an e-mail on Groupwise shortly after I registered on it from someone who called themselves Bernard Assifuah inviting me to be his “friend”(!)  There was no profile for him and when I looked at his group of “friends” I found a stange looking bunch of oddballs and quickly blocked him from contacting me again.  If the others are real, hopefully I have blocked them too.  I think we should have been warned about this sort of thing, as I suppose there could be a security risk from weirdos such as this.   

I found 3 videos of my neice on YouTube conducting in America.  I suppose YouTube could be quite useful as a promotional tool, but most people who need to promote themselves or their businesses have their own website.  I also watched a couple of funny cat videos on YouTube and a woman who explained the origin and uses of the words arse and ass.  Intriguing.  I checked my pictures of USA and Turkey on Flickr.  I’m looking forward to adding another set from Switzerland!

Week 1.  The post explained what WebQuest is all about.  We can find information to help us with the tasks in the learning guides on the Library Moodle page.  To do this you log onto Moodle, click on Library & IT Workshop, then Information Literacy Skills, then Have you twigged? 

There were also links on the Week 1 WebQuest blog to 4 videos, which we were asked to watch.  The first provides a definition of Web 2.0 by Tim O’Reilly.  “…..”  The Machine is using us is an example of a video on YouTube (all on YouTube?), and the subject was social networking.  Web 2.0:  a very brief introduction showed photographs and screenshots about the development of the internet and social networking.  What is Web 2.0 is an informal talk by an American woman about web 2.0 and social networking.  Some library staff posted positive comments on LibeRaCe about this film.

Week 2.  Creating a blog. 

New terms

A blog (or weblog) is a form of website where entries are added and filed in date order, almost like a diary, with the most recent entries at the top.  WordPress is an example of a blog.

A blogroll is a list of interesting or useful blogs that you want to share with others.

A post is an article/comment/image that you publish on your website, wiki (what’s that?), or blog.

Widgets are the small boxes that you see to the side of a blog or website that are pre-programmed to contain text, pictures, RSS feeds (what are these?) and more.  It is an easy way of adding extras to your site without needing to know any programming language.

 I set up my account by going to www.wordpress.com, clicking on Sign Up Now! and then on Register a username, password and blogname.  I chose Doowyam as my username, which is Maywood spelt backwards.  This is also my Blogname.  I added my weblog/website to my Favourites in a new folder called Blogging.  I entered my btinternet email address as my contact address because so many emails are automatically trashed on Groupwise.  Any changes made, comments on posts or notices will be sent here (by the LibeRaCe administrators?).   

I then clicked on the Design tab and chose Sunburn for the layout.  This has white text on a black background, which is easy to read.  Next I added widgets.  Most of the names meant nothing to me so I chose terms which were familiar:  del.icio.uc, Search, Recent Posts and Flickr.

A post called “Hello World” appeared automatically when I set up my weblog.  This can be deleted, changed or added to.  I deleted it.

To write a new post I clicked on the Write tab of the dashboard.

 The address of my weblog is http://doowyam.wordpress.com. 

To edit my weblog or “access my dashboard”, I go into http://wordpress.com and then enter my username and password in the bluish Already hip? box.  I can edit published posts and continue with any saved but unpublished blogs on this page.

I have noticed that when I click on Save, the cursor returns to the top of the page which means that I have to scroll down again to continue adding to the blog.  Saving also takes quite a while.

I haven’t registered my blog address with the quest administrators, because I can’t find any instructions for doing this.

Week 3.  Tagging and Bookmarking

New terms

A tag is an informal subject heading you can add to a blog post, bookmark, wiki page or uploaded photograph to categorise and find them later.

Social bookmarking  is like adding tags to the saved bookmarks in your college Favourites Menu, but your Favourites list is hosted by an online service.  You can access the list from any computer anywhere in the world and share your chosen sites/files with anyone.  Examples include Del.icio.us and Flickr and we are using Flickr and Del.icio.us to learn about tagging and social bookmarking. 

I worked through the handout Setting up a del.icio.us account.  First I registered my account on the website http://del.icio.us by entering a username and password and my email address.  To install the delicious shortcut buttons on every computer I use I will have to click on Help/FAQ/How do I install buttons again …  I will have to do this on every PC I use, if I want to use my del.icio.us bookmarks.  I had already added the college webside my account and tagged it.  It is in a folder (or bundle?) named FE/College_websites. 

The next step was to import a saved Favourites folder from my PC.  I clicked on Applications/College website/File/Import & Export, selected one of my folders called “Sarah” from the Browse list and saved it to my H drive.  Having tagged and entered the name of the folder I was ready to import it into del.icio.us.  I clicked on the Settings button at the top of the page and then on import/upload.  I clicked on the Browse button and found the folder on my H drive, changed the subject of the bookmarked folder from “imported” to “Sarah”.

I found this quite complicated and will have to do it a few times to remember all the steps involved.  Some of it though is fairly intuitive and you can see what to do from the screen rather that having to follow the handout.