• The second week of my chaotic presentation will focus around “Blogs as Portals”, “Print Communication and E-list”, and “Aggregator Engines”.
• I am aware that I am moving fast and that much of this material must still seem disjointed, but I promise, there is an end result in mind. There have been a number of questions about looking for a syllabus, clear set of instructions, focused format or what-have-you in the yahoo group list. I am not sure that any of those do or even should exist. It was my intent, and I’m not speaking for the other collaborators, to make this a learning adventure. There is no map, because I am hoping that you will take this opportunity to explore this new frontier and map it for yourself. One reason that I believe that portal technology has the great potential that it does, is that part of that technology is directed at satisfying the user’s need first. If I tell you what your portal should look like or what kinds of elements should be there, then I am telling you what I want, not what you or anyone else wants. I can tell you what I would prefer, and can, hopefully even provide a bit of an example of what I hope to achieve with my own portal. But to explicitly say that A+B=C denies you an opportunity to come to answer for yourself. So with that said, I am going to continue my approach. I will remind you that there is no exam at the end of this class, you will receive no certificate, there will be no promotion. If you focus on exploration, your only reward in the end, will be that you learned to do something that you did not know how to do in the beginning. If you establish a collaborative community of like folks around you, then your efforts will be magnified many times over. Further, this class has no real ending date for me. I have hosted it on my own server because I am planning to leave it there as long as I can (at some point in the distant future, I would like to make it or something similar to it, into a income generator…but that’s well down the road). Finally, think about who you are in terms of this technology (not the class but the technology). You all probably have students in your classes that could already use this technology in their sleep, with one hand tied behind their back. They are the “native learners”. This type of technology is all that they have ever known. Most of the rest of us are immigrants. I have a long held reverence for things technical and computers in general since my youth (I took a computer class in 1968 – punch cards, hours of up time – slow results – a huge air controlled room to cool a monstrous IBM computer), but I did not grow up understanding all these new ways of doing business or of education. We are not only learning, in some cases, we are re-learning. To me that is a double burden. Not that it can’t be effectively done, but just that there are going to be days when it is terribly frustrating. Bear with us and we finally get to the end, and whatever is left that you still don’t understand, you will still be able to learn in due time because you will have a much better set of resources and more solid foundation for understanding the concepts of this technology.
• Now for some hints. These are things that I see that you need to be watching for in this class:
| Hint 1 The Web Presence PB Wiki. Not only should you be reading it regularly, you should be learning how to use it. This is cutting edge stuff and Vance is offering you a wonderful opportunity to experiment and experience this thing. You really can’t break it, and learning to use it, will put you way ahead of the curve in terms of tools.| Hint 2 Learn to use RSS. Buth and I both will be adding elements of RSS to or presentations this week, but if you haven’t been exposed to it yet, I suggest you plug in “Top Ten Aggregators” in your Google search engine right now, and find one that suits your needs and put it on your PC or whatever machine you intend to use, and start adding the RSS feed from all the things in this course. It will save you an immense amount of time looking for all the changes and all the new things that are being added all the time. I use the Thunderbird (open source Mozilla) Email platform, that includes a wonderful built in RSS aggregator. Every time I visit a page that has a RSS notice at the bottom of the site, I click on that link, copy the URL into my “Add account” in Thunderbird, and Thunderbird does the rest of the work for me. It not only notifies me when something new has been added, but it allows me to look at it directly from my browser. Most of the stuff in this class, is built on RSS, so you could conceivably keep up with just about all of it from your email platform. Hint 3 Read the blogs. I know I am trying to add as much stuff as I can via the blog. One reason is to show that a blog can be used as a portal (I am not using WordPress because it is easy to manipulate but because it is built on modules and blocks just like the moodle, and just like so many other pieces of portal ware) and the other is to provide me a chance to send information that might not easily fit into the content at the Portal Moodle or even on the Web Presence PBWiki. I have a blog, Buth has a blog, and I think Vance, is still using Buzznet as a blog….You might want to check with Vance. Hint 4 Make sure you are keeping up with Buth’s section. ( Week One and Week Two) She has some great subjects planned and I am really looking forward to hearing what she has to say. Hint 5 Set up Del.icio.us account or a SuprGlu account. Both of these are social bookmarking systems. I know how vluable your time is, and I know that you don’t always have the time to go and read something that is thrown out there for you. I also know that the old traditional bookmarking systems reside on your PC and are not accessible from remote locations or easily sharable with with a friend or a student. Social bookmarking applications exist online, so they can be shared, easily accessed from any where and are not browser specific. They are great ways to keep up with what is going on, and to remind you where and what you read. I believe both give you an opportunity to make a few short notes that can jog your memory, and learning about how to tag the things you read will be invaluable to you. Also, you can share entire accounts with each other. We could even set up one master Del.icio.us accounts that links all of our individual del.icio.us accounts to it. Everyone’s book marks would be in the same place. Hint 6 Take advantage of Buth’s encouragement for you to set up Odeo accounts. Then use screen capture or some other program ( I use Snippy – sorry no MAC program) and Odeo to make demo’s of how to do something related to this course. Then take advantage of Vance’s offer to use the sample Moodle he is setting up, or even the Wiki, to show how you installed a piece of software, or how you edited the wiki to show a different color box or a border…whatever appeals to you. Not only do you learn how to install the software, you learn how to do online demo’s and you learn how to add them to a moodle. If everyone does this, by the end of the course we have this wonderful instructional manual to use. With screen capture and Odeo, you have both illustrations and audio. Hint 7 Regarding my “Web Presence through Portals” Moodle, every week will contain several new elements of portal technology. Because of the on-going nature of this effort, I don’t know that any of them will ever be completely finished (I am hoping people will continue to share resources here for a long time to come), but each week I will be adding some new subjects. I am going to try to add those on Sunday so they begin a new week. There may be some days, when that may be a bit delayed, or I may have to inject some earlier than I had planned. Either way, most of them have a front end piece pulled from Wikipedia (because they are all hypertext to what I think are the best all around sources of information out there today) followed by some examples of open source programs that I am experimenting with. Some of those programs maybe suitable to you and others won’t. If you already have something similar in use, let me know and I will add the URL to your courseware or portal-ware and others can take a look at what you are doing and perhaps you would be so kind to explain it’s strengths and weaknesses. Following the examples is a set of links to reading and resources that are significant to the subject in that area. There is no rule anywhere that you need to read all of those resources (though they all go a long way in defining and explaining the subject area). Read the ones that appeal to you. Most of them are hyperlinked to other un-listed options….read those if you like. This is exploratory so take advantage of these resources anyway that you can. Finally, at the end of each section is a forum. Each forum is related specifically to the topic in that area. I have made suggested starts to each forum, but that will not stop you from starting your own string of questions and comments. In fact, I encourage you to start your own, whenever it hasn’t been brought up by someone else. These can be a fabulous learning asset and again, they are all on RSS so you can get changes right there in your email platform. Please, participate in these forums, even if it is just to say you agree or disagree. You input will make a world of difference to everyone else here. Hint 8 Lastly, if you haven’t yet, I suggest you set up a Skype account. For two reasons. One – so you can communicate live with anyone else on the list who has an account whenever they are online. The other is because this is immensely useful software. I am planning a session later in the class on VOIP which is the understructure of Skype. Skype is one of the few proprietary tools I am going to make mention of, and I do that only because Skype has released their API to the rest of the world and there are so many good free products already circulating with it, that to not mention it and use it, would be a disservice to you. My Skype identifier is ‘elderbob’ (would you have guessed it). Feel free to use it to contact me any time you like. If my Skype light is on, and I am at the computer, I will answer. If I don’t answer, it’s probably because I dozed off at the computer and didn’t see the light. |
• I think the first week was very productive, even if stressful and am looking for to several more good weeks. If there is anything at all that I can do to help, let me know. I may or may not do it the way you like, but I will try to please as many as possible. Have a great week ahead.
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