Material referenced in this post:
“A Collaborative Approach to Collecting Online Music Resources” by Dr. William I. Bauer
“Wikis in Plain English” by The Common Craft
“Social Bookmarking in Plain English” by The Common Craft
“Searching the Web in Plain English” by The Common Craft
del.icio.us tutorials by Atomic Learning
I found both wikis and del.icio.us to be very understandable and extremely useful. I am looking forward to beginning both of these projects because I know they will manifest a large number of resources for music educators. I really did not understand what a wiki was until watching the videos. It seems like it can be a great way to collect information and facilitate ongoing discussions online as opposed to sending copious e-mails which may quickly become confusing. I enjoy the Common Craft videos because I am so behind in the field of online resources. I am thankful that they explain these tools in simple terms. During the video, though, I did find myself wondering how reliable wikis can be in terms of valid information on a topic. Can any internet user make changes to a wiki or are they password protected? In the camping video, it seemed like anyone could easily change a wiki. That’s why I think it would be important to click the “notify me tab,” so that the creator is sent a message every time a change is made to the Wiki.
Finding web pages that are appropriate and useful can be a challenge so I also found the “Searching the Web in Plain English” video to be helpful. I was not aware that if I type a “-“ sign next to a word in my search engine, all sites that include this word will be excluded from my results. I haven’t tried this yet, but I can imagine it being extremely useful. I think the key in all of this is social networking. A music educator should be concerned with what others have found on the web and I’m still slightly unsure of how to do this. I believe the tutorials mentioned that all of my bookmarks are public by default, unless I marked them otherwise. Does that mean that all other users can see my bookmarks or just those in my network? I probably need to read the assignment guidelines more carefully, but I also don’t quite know how to add users to my network. Dr. Bauer’s article stated that I should click the Network link and then type musiceducation. Will that include me into the network of any user who tags sites as musiceducation? Also – the article suggested that I use the tag “mued” for anything related to music education. Are all other music teachers, new to the del.icio.us network, familiar with this term? I’m also still slightly confused about RSS feeds. RSS feeds have to go to my Google Reader, correct? They are not notifications sent to my e-mail account(?). Are there different varieties of RSS feeds? I still love the acronym, though – “Really Simple Syndication.”
Overall, I am glad to have both a wikispace and a delicious account. I feel better knowing what these tools are and how to access them. My greatest concern at the moment, however, is that I may stop using them at the completion of this course. I going to practice working with both of these accounts throughout the semester so that utilizing such resources will become like second nature.
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I'm glad you're enjoying the Common Craft videos. I'm a huge fan of them! I will try to answer your questions:
ReplyDelete1) In general, anyone may edit a wiki. Wikipedia is a perfect example of this. Anyone can change a page and there are people who monitor the edits to make sure they're appropriate. However, some wikis are set to only be edited by "members", like our MUED TECH wiki.
2)Your bookmarks are public by default. If you want one to be private, check the "mark as private" box when you save the bookmark.
3)"musiceducation" is Dr. Bauer's username. To add him or another colleague to your network, click on the "People" tab and then "My Network". There's an option there to add someone via their username.
ReplyDelete4)GoogleReader is not the only RSS reader you can use, FYI. Trust me that you don't want the feeds to be sent to your email once you have a lot of them. (For example, I'm behind on mine and I have 900 new posts that I can read!) If you happen to use iGoogle, you can have your reader display there. Look under Settings>Goodies in Google Reader for more info. I also won't be surprised if Case Mail/Google Apps Labs eventually include a way to display your Google Reader on your mail page. I already have a preview of my Google Calendar and Google Docs displaying there.
5)The more you use and try these resources, the more comfortable you'll get!