#23: Learning never ends (but the time has come. . . )

Listen to our podcast [2:10]:

Wow! How time flies when you're having fun. That's the power of play.

Even though learning never ends, we've come to the 23rd thing. Just in case you were worried, these 23 Things aren't disappearing, so you can come back at any time and catch up, or add a comment to any of our entries, or explore some more. Because we have feeds to all of your blogs (and we hope you do too), we invite you to keep playing, writing, commenting and sharing. In fact, you can go to the Blogger Template and change the title of your blog (or add a subtitle) so it reflects the ongoing nature of learning 2.0. If you never quite got around to sharing the name of your blog with us, you can still let us know (by commenting on Thing 4.) We know we have some lurkers out there; you don't have to hide!

So now it's time to take stock and reflect on what you've learned over the past 10 weeks. Even if you skipped some of the 23 Things, we're really interested in what you've learned about your own learning during our time together.

Discovery Resources:

1. Go back to Thing #2 and review the Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. Read your notes (is it still in your 23 Things folder?) or re-read the post you wrote for Thing #4.
   


2. Review all of the 23 Things. There's a list in the very first blog post (linked in the sidebar on the left). Think about which ones you enjoyed and which ones you didn't like or just passed over.



3. Read Will Richardson's "Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning?" from his blog Webblogg-ed. Don't forget to read the really interesing comments at the end.

And now, for our final activities.

Did you play and learn? We've played (and worked) and learned a lot. A lot of a lot. So much so that we were challenged by the Goldilocks dilemma throughout our trek with you. You know, that conundrum of whether it's too much, too little, or just right?

So, did you find anything "just right"?

We want to know! We will be gathering information from here and there, from those of you we know, from those we sort of know, and from those of you who choose to remain anonymous. Please consider informing us of your impressions and/or suggestions through one or more venues:

• Anonymous survey responses (use link below)
• Your blog entries (most but not all of yours indicate names)
• Comments on this blog entry (another anonymous option)
• Email us at 23Things@gcmail.maricopa.edu (both Karen and Christine receive the message) or email one or the other of us!
  

Thanks for taking the trek with us and for letting us know what you think.

Discovery Activities:

1. Complete our survey, please.
   
2. Write a blog entry about what you've learned about your own learning during the past 10 weeks.

So we've come to the end of our travels in the world of Web 2.0, but we know we will keep on learning, and we hope you will too. Happy trails!

Christine and Karen

#18: Word processing without purchasing software?

And you can access your documents whereever you have Internet access??

And it's free?

Yes, Web 2.0 explorers, this is the new world in which we are living and working and playing.

Listen to this podcast [2:30] -->

Web-based word processing and spreadsheet applications are readily available and powerful collaboration tools. Users can create and share documents without having to transfer or email files to others; further, users need not be concerned about what software (and version) their collaborators have installed.

Online word processing tools like this do their best to have similar tool bars to the omnipresent MS Word. So, for the most part, using these tools are practically identical to the way you create, type, and edit documents using the Word program on your computer. Plus, these tools warehouse earlier versions of your document indicating time, date, and username -- just like on a wiki!

So why not use a wiki instead, you might ask?

Users can share access to documents/pages for simultaneous use, leaving their "mark" for what changes or additions were made when; nobody needs to transfer files; access can be public or private; accessibility is centralized in a single online location. Yes, all these are features common to both wikis and to online word processing applications. However, web-based word processing allows for printed documents and for file format options for sharing or storing elsewhere. These tools simulate programs normally installed as software applications for producing tangible documents - for printing physical manifestations of work completed electronically. While wiki pages can be printed just like any html documents, the formatting options for printing are rather limited.

And at the root, the genesis of these marvels of Web 2.0 distinguish them (even as the evolving uses of them may blur these distinctions). The creative intention behind wikis centered on collaborative databases of information - virtual collections of interlinked documents residing on the Internet. The intention of web-based applications like Google Docs and Zoho Writer centers on production, with the old fashioned physical sense that implies. In fact, another term for these applications is online productivity tools.

Discovery Resources

If you are curious to see "published" documents created by web-based word processors, take a look at these:

• created using Zoho Writer
• created using Google Docs

Each of the above are html pages so you cannot really get a sense of simulated word processing until you use the applications yourself. So, on to the part of the Thing where you do your own tinkering!

Discovery Exercise
As has been my habit, I'm offering options that vary depending on you deep you like plunging in the deep muddy of Web 2.0.

Just Curious Depth

1. You already have a Google account if you created your blog using Blogger, so you're halfway there! Visit Google Docs (or from a Google search page, click more and select Documents).
2. Sign in with your gmail account name.
3. Create a document - or a spreadsheet, if you're more of an Excel aficionado.
4. Publish your document on the web or to your blog. Note: If you create a spreadsheet, you can only publish to the web.
5. If publishing to your blog, edit your post to add something about when or why you might use this instead of posting from your blog initially. If you publishing to the web, provide a link to your document in a blog post and let us know what you think of online productivity tools like this.
   

Deep End

1. Follow the above steps 1 through 4.
2. Go to Zoho Writer to sign up for an account.
3. Create the same kind of document you created at Google Docs and publish it, too.
4. Open a second window or tab so you can be logged in at both Google and Zoho at the same time. Compare views of your revisions. Similarities, differences?
   
5. Create or edit a blog entry comparing Google and Zoho for word processing or for spreadsheets. Which do you prefer? Tell us why!

Really Deep End

1. Complete the above Deep End tasks.
2. Invite 23Things (@gcmail.maricopa.edu) to collaborate on a document you've created - or invite a 23Things @ GCC buddy or any friend to collaboratively work on your document. Note: your collaborator will also need an account with the tool you use; otherwise, access will be read only (not read/write).
   

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BTW: the first draft of this blog entry was created in Zoho Writer. I "published" it to my blog (as a draft) having checked the options "With tags" and "Post as draft" - and it transformed the Zoho tags to coded links to Technorati. Amazing!

Technorati Tag: collaboration
N.B.: two-word terms don't work unless you run them together as one word -- even if you put quotation marks around a phrase, the code will only search for the first word. Fixing this is beyond my current html knowledge.

#17: Tee, hee, hee -- what wiki variety

Listen to our podcast [2:00]:

Wikipedia gets most of the media attention these days*, but in our explorations, we have found lots of other kinds of wikis, including the following:

• Wikibooks (a collection of open-content textbooks)


• WikiTexts (a different collection of open-content textbooks)


• The Flu Wiki and The Lostpedia (a genre of Fan wikis


• Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia

GCC launched a wiki pilot last year. You can read it without an account. If you'd like to play around by editing or adding new material, let me know and I'll create an account for you. GCC's wiki uses a different piece of software, Confluence. If you explore enough different wiki sites, eventually you'll be able to recognize the different kinds of wiki software.

Discovery Activity

1. Explore the 23 Things wiki. This wiki has an editing password to reduce the amount of spam we have to deal with. It is learning2.0


2. Feel free to edit any page. That's the whole point of a wiki! You can add information, re-organize material that's there, change anything (especially if there's an error).


3. [Optional] Create a new wiki page in the 23 Things wiki.


4. Write a blog post about anything related to wikis. Share ways in which you think you could use a wiki for personal and professional activities.
   

Most wikis have some kind of notification mechanism that can alert you by email when a page has been changed. Scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click on notifications to set up an email alert. The RSS option is located on the bottom right of the page. (You know how to use that, right?)

Tags are important parts of wikis too. Use the [tiny, tiny] + sign on the bottom left of each page to add tags to each wiki page. You can add tags even when the author didn't.

* If you are interested in the controversy surrounding Wikipedia, we are building a collection of resources about Wikipedia itself in the GCC wiki. You can also read the Britannica Blog's Web 2.0 forum, although remember that they an interest in encylcopedias.

#16: Making collaboration easy with a wiki

Listen to this podcast [3:13]:

Two important features of Web 2.0 merge in this week’s thing: the read/write web and social tools. Blogs and Flickr make it possible for anyone to contribute to the web easily, and tools like tagging and social bookmarking help us leverage the wisdom of crowds, or at least winnow what we find. Now – hold on to your boots, folks – we’re going to examine a Web 2.0 application that combines all of this: the wiki. Don't be fooled by the strange, slightly silly-sounding name; this is a serious application that allows anyone to write, edit, or remove content on the web. It's quick and easy.

There are both free and buyable wikis, but all of them share four important capabilities:

• Anyone can add, edit or delete content. Sometimes you may need an account or a password in order to reduce the amount of spam.


• Tracking tools (often combined with RSS) help you keep up with changes.


• Reversion capabilities allow anyone read or return to previous versions of a page.


• Users can compose pages using simple editing tools. No HTML needed!
  

Discovery Resources
Because of their growing popularity, you can find lots of resources on the web about wikis. We've collected a few, but you can find more using any search engine.

1. Here's a video from Common Craft:

Click To Play

2. From EduCause, "7 things you should know about Wikis," a simple 2-page handout in portable document format.

3. Read Jay Rosen's statement/manifesto published a year ago, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience."

Discovery Activities

We created a wiki for 23 Things several weeks ago; some of you may have found it linked on the left side of our 23 Things blog. (This wiki uses pbwiki, a free site on the web.)

1. Take the PBWiki Tour to learn how PBWiki works.


2. Explore this PBWiki Video Gallery of PBWiki features


3. Write a blog post about what you've learned about the use of wikis.

#5: Discovering Flickr

Listen to this podcast [1:45] ---> powered by ODEO

Let's Dance!
Originally uploaded by greeneyedhedgehog

Flickr - yes, that's not a typo. There isn't an e missing between those last two consonants.

Flickr is a web tool for posting and sharing photos openly online. There are other tools and photo sites, but Flickr sort of revolutionized this web photo album idea (and it's very Web 2.0).

First, Flickr took 'sharing' to a new level by allowing users to make public or private individual photos; then, Flickr added a feature called tags (with a cute little tag/label icon). Tags are keyword labels users associate with their images. They are not unique to Flickr, but my background reading indicates that Flickr was among the first (if not the first) photo site to making tagging available. We'll be getting into more tagging in Week 6.

So, for this 5th Thing, we encourage you to look at Flickr and find out what it's all about. Okay, maybe not what it's all about, but check it out!

You can head straight to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) to start your own exploration, or you might want to start with their tour.

• Tour (7 pages of brief info)
• Explore
  
• Here's some info about tags. And/or here are examples of popular Flickr tags
• Images from the last 7 days WARNING! Hitting that reload button might absorb a lot of your time
• About interestingness, Flickr's great word for Last 7 days photo selection and a very vague explanation of how they apply it...
  
  

Discovery Exercise:

In this discovery exercise, you have three options… one involves creating an account, the other involves multiple steps to avoid creating a Flickr account but still selecting an image to blog about, the last involves using a digital image you already have (and creating an account).

For all of these options, my verbosity will make the instructions look daunting, but really, this stuff is easier than the length of this page makes it look!

Option 1
Creating an account is really pretty easy - but it is another account (refer again to tips on keeping track of accounts from Karen's first podcast - #1: The first thing!). Well, it's sort of two more accounts but really one account that let's you do more stuff in other places. Flickr requires a Yahoo! ID (essentially a Yahoo! email address) for creating an account - but they walk you through this step by step. [If you already have a Yahoo! email account, just use that and log in right away.]

Once you have the account created, Flickr will ask you for a screen name - it doesn't have to be the same as your account name. Have fun! People have cool, fun, and mysterious screen names. And then you can create an icon for yourself (photo of yourself or an image of anything you like) - or leave it as the default indifferent emoticon. Add as much or as little to your profile as you wish (or are ready to complete at this point) on the Personal Information tab. Before finishing your profile, though, click on the Extending Flickr tab to link your blog to your Flickr account.

Under Your blogs click the link "Configure your Flickr-to-blog settings" then Set up your blog. If you set up a new Blogger account for Thing #3, you'll use the first (default) tool listed, "Blogger Blog (New)," and click the Next button. The next page will say stuff about beta, beta.blogger.com, and things that might confuse you and me, so just click the link "Head over to Google now."

Enter your Google/Blogger/Gmail account and password, then on the next page Grant Access. Flickr assumes you have more than one blog (what a compliment to us newbies!); just click next if your blog title shows. Confirm the blog settings, click All Done. You then have an option for creating a custom post template, layout and settings for posting images to your blog.

You're done with account creation and linking your blog.

Now, go find a picture! Just about every page in Flickr has a search field in the upper right - even the one where you just finished linking your blog. Search for something you fancy. The Italian Alps? snow cones? serenity? From the search results page, click on the image you like best.

The page displaying the single photo will present, just above the image in gray text and icons, options of what you can do with the photo. Select the "Blog this" option and follow the prompts. You can edit this later when you log into your Blogger account (or change it from published post to a draft as I did with the image above while I fretted over verbiage).

Option 2
So, you're not ready to create yet another account. But we still want you to actively explore Flickr. Remember one of the few rules we have? Rule 2 is Share - and Flickr is so good about sharing! They have even incorporated Creative Commons licensing with the images available publicly.

Okay, so head to Flickr and search for something of interest to you. The beach? windswept plains? a Snickers bar?

Got one? An image, that is, not a candy bar.

3 Ft R > 1,
originally uploaded by
MyAngelG.

Select your favorite from among the results and click on it. On the page with the single image, just above the picture you'll see a magnifying glass icon and "All sizes" - click on that button. This brings you to a download page with options for the size you want (mind you, you'll be downloading this for your blog, so think about what size image you want there). Select your size and download the image. Make a note about who posted this image so you can provide an attribution and/or a link to the Flickr page.

Now log into your blog, create a new entry and "add image" following Blogger instructions for uploading images. Publish your post!

Option 3

If you have lots of digital images, you might want to browse through them before getting into Flickr so you have something in mind to start uploading to your Flickr account.

Head to Flickr to set up an account if you don't already have one. Flickr requires a Yahoo! ID (essentially a Yahoo! email address) for creating an account. If you already have a Yahoo! email account, just use that and log in right away.

Once you have the account created, Flickr will ask you for a screen name - it doesn't have to be the same as your account name. Then you can choose to create an icon for yourself (photo of yourself or an image of anything you like) - or leave it as the default indifferent emoticon. This was an obstacle for me because I didn't have a small enough image to use for an icon. (That'll be my 24th thing, maybe?). Add as much or as little to your profile as you wish (or are ready to complete at this point) on the Personal Information tab. Before finishing your profile, though, click on the Extending Flickr tab to link your blog to your Flickr account.

Under Your blogs click the link "Configure your Flickr-to-blog settings" then Set up your blog. If you set up a new Blogger account for Thing #3, you'll use the first (default) tool listed, "Blogger Blog (New)," and click the Next button. The next page will say stuff about beta, beta.blogger.com, and things that might confuse you and me, so just click the link "Head over to Google now."

Enter your Google/Blogger/Gmail account and password, then on the next page Grant Access. Just click next if your blog title shows (if you have more than one Blogger page, there is a drop down menu of your blogs). Confirm the blog settings by clicking All Done. You then have an option for creating a custom post template, layout and settings for posting images to your blog.

You're done with account creation and linking your blog.

Now, upload an image or two (or as many as you wish!). Once you have uploaded an image, you can blog from that image page! Look just above the image to find gray text and icons giving you options of what you can do with the photo. Select the "Blog this" option and follow the prompts. The title of the blog entry defaults to the image title, but you can change that. Type in blog entry and hit the Post Entry button. (You can edit this post more extensively when you log into your Blogger account.) Pretty cool, huh?


Notes about searching in Flickr

• use quotation marks around phrases (otherwise Flickr inserts AND between words)
• the ubiquitous Search box searches on full text, not just tags; you can narrow your search somewhat from the results page by clicking the option "Tags only" and re-running your search.
  
• to go directly to a search page for searching tags only, click on the Search link next to the search box (without typing anything in search box)
• looks like it automatically searches for both singular and plural (e.g. searching "snow cones" will result in images tagged "snow cone")
  

P.S. If you are curious, like I am, about how the site name Flickr was determined, I found a blogged interview of Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake (yes, that's her last name) and learned that they went for "a name that meant light and motion" - and that she is relieved they did not choose a variation on the word photography.