final thoughts

Well this has been a whirlwind of a summer class. As much as my personal issues seemed to get in the way of spending a lot of time exploring the Web 2.0 technologies, I think it got me to understand the value of them as well. Being able to stay up on class blogs and tweets while driving from Tallahassee to St. Louis and working on my class produsage assignments while sitting in a waiting room at a hospital is amazing. Education and learning is truly mobile. If you have cell service or internet access it doesn’t seem to matter where you are you can access information. Having experiences this class had changed my outlook on the Web. (Still not big into sharing personal information/stories) I still continue to participate in the community I joined. Not as frequently but every few days. I see great tools and apps everywhere. I don’t know if any of you have ever been morel hunting (wild mushrooms, come up in the spring in the Midwest.) They are hard to find, but it seems once you find one, it is like magic and next thing you know you are surrounded by dozens of them, but at first you only saw the one. My Web 2.0 experience has been like that. Only a few tools to now many.

The last six weeks I have spent more time exploring the internet then I have ever before. In thinking back to last summer when I took my first two online classes. I was lost, didn’t know what Blackboard was, other than a website that I needed to go to get my assignments. Ever since then I have been engaging more and more into the Web and web 2.0 technologies and other software that can be used for education. Prior to starting graduate school I knew the basics. Microsoft office, email, and had a FaceBook account (which I never posted to, I do try to occasionally now when I have something to share). My first experience with Web 2.0 was Diigo, and using a Wiki, and Google docs. I was very uncertain of all three. Now I am an advocate for the use of these sites. I love using Dropbox to share files. Even photos, I no longer have to send a bunch of emails with a few photos at a time, instead I save the photos to Dropbox, share the folder and it is up to the other individuals to get the photos. To me Dropbox and Google docs has been a great tool over the past year allowing group work to really be collaborative instead of individual work pasted together. Over the past year I have developed an awareness of the tools available, most being the last few weeks. I think of it as I have windowed shopped a lot and tried a few.   It has been an enjoyable experience and I am excited to see how I can incorporate some of these tools into the CG.

Online courses and The roles we play

After reading our article today "Crowdsourcing Education on the Web" by Joseph Corneli I thought of my own role in my online education experience. Even though not an open education...As it talked about roles I compared the roles I have had in my F2F and online courses. I believe that I have contributed differently and have often stated that I preferred the F2F courses. My views may have changed, I feel my personality comes out the same on line as it does in F2F. The thing I like about the online courses is the written collaboration. I feel I have more time to generate my thoughts and there is more of an opportunity to read others comments. This compared to F2F courses where you really only here the comments of a few students. I don't contribute as much as some, but I feel I learn a lot from others. In this course for example, I had no idea how to find Web 2.0 tools. Thanks to everyone sharing tools and articles over the past few weeks I have had an opportunity to check them out.  

Great experience

Week 6 Prompt

Reflect on what you have learned in the class and how you will use it professionally as both a lifelong learner and an instructional systems professional (or whatever field you’re in)

Being apart of this class has been a great experience. I have engaged in Web 2.0 technology that I can say for a fact that I otherwise would not have. I have continued to participate in one of the communities that I joined for our community paper assignment. It has helped me to learn about my mom’s diagnoses, which I have then shared with her. I have used several of the tools shared by classmates in my blogs. Some of which I hope to be able to use in the future to create Web 2.0 based learning opportunities in the CG.

You Tube

While working on my produsage assignment and adding content to my blog I spent some time searching You Tube for videos related to vessel inspections. I imagine most everyone has already explored many of the different You Tube videos, but I haven't.  I have to honesty say that I have never looked for videos on You Tube. I have watched them, but never searched for videos on any particular topic. I found so many. I think I spent a couple of hours today viewing videos. Probably not a good use of time when I am working on my project but it was a bit addicting. A few of them I added to my blog as examples of things that can be posted on the topic of vessel inspections.

So many passwords

This has been a great week for me exploring Web 2.0. I have given in and started to sign up for many of the different tools. My past hesitation has been because I don't like having a ton of accounts and passwords.  However, over the past few weeks I have put this hesitation and just signed up. What I have found is that now that I have all of these tools I am on the Web a lot more.  I have been sharing tools with my friends and family, hoping that they will see how cool they are too.  I don’t know if I will be able to incorporate any of these tools at work. But, who knows maybe a few. 

Though, I am getting better at managing all of these accounts. I have my little cheat sheet with passwords and account names. 

Keeping it all organized

I continue to be amazed by the tools that are available for us to share information.  Getting information on a topic is so easy. One of the things I have been working on getting better at is tagging, or creating better bookmarks so that once I find something, I can find it again. I have been working on using some of the tools this week that have been shared. I am hoping that these will work as a time saver in the future for me.  

I have tried using tagging but have not been very good at being consistent. I have been using Diigo since last summer and also an app on my IPad to save articles. Both allow for tagging. Looking at my tags in my neu.Annotate app, I feel that I have a lot of random tags. When I made them they seemed to work, but now when I go back to look for things I still find I sometimes have to open up and go to multiple files before finding the one I was looking for.  I hope with some practice that I will develop a system that works. I realize this may be a sign that I am not very organized.  I wonder if anyone has a system that they use for tagging - how specific do you get, or how general? 

I have been using Web 2.0 all along –

I am beginning to see how Web 2.0 is really all around.  Yesterday, I was getting food from an old favorite restaurant near my mom’s house. It has been several years since I have ordered from it. It’s a small place and they don’t have a website. After doing some searching I found that someone had posted the menu on Yelp, others had posted a few pictures and of course there were restaurant reviews.  I was able to use this to make an order for pick up.

Then this morning while deciding where I was going to run, I logged into Map My Run and searched a list of routes for a local park other runners had shared. I was able to find one the length I wanted to run. Loaded up on the Iphone and I was off.

Web 2.0 tools I think are becoming so much a part of the Web that I think they get used without even thinking about it.  Any time I set up a new running route I have always selected to share the route. Never thought about it until today that I was producing information that others may use.

I may not use Web 2.0 as much as some, but over the past few weeks that has changes, but also I have realized I have been using it more than I thought.