Commenting on this blog

A few of you have reported problems with commenting on this blog - mainly related to adding your name. It seems that if you add your name (or choose to post anonymously) before adding your comments they work fine.

I have produced a short screen capture to demonstrate adding comments.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who came to today's session on Web 2.0 - it was great to see so many people.

Please do carry on using this blog and leaving comments. Note that all comments are moderated to ensure that the blog doesn't get spammed by non-IS staff. So there may be a delay in you seeing your comments. I will of course make all IS comments available (as long as you don't say any offensive!!).

Do leave your comments about the session here too - this is the first time we've run the course, so we like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

One suggestion I had from a participant was a follow up session when you've had time to evaluate and think about which tools are useful and which are not ... Do you think that would be a good idea?

Thanks again - we enjoyed the session and hope you did too.

Social networking

Hands-up who's on Facebook? Do you tweet?

Many of us are using social networking to keep in touch with family and friends, but there are also a number of professional organisations and networks who are starting to make use of these tools. For this exercise we'll be concentrating on Facebook [FB].

If you are already signed up to Facebook you can follow this exercise now. If you aren't then I'll give you some things to think about before you make your first steps into social networking.

If you have a FB account
In this exercise, we're going to look at finding out information and contacts relevant to your work context, so we'll see which organisations and companies have a presence on Facebook. these are a little like personal profiles but are run by organisations. By linking up with these pages and group you become part of a virtual conference networking session; you can meet other users and find out who else you know is interested.

Here's some useful information about organisational presence on Facebook ...
As well as personal profiles, there are Groups and Pages. The difference between the two might help you decide how you want to link up with an organisation.

1. Pages can only be used to represent a real person or organisation. They can only be set up by an official representative of that organisation or person. FB say that they are designed in order to maintain a distinction between the personal and the professional. You can become a Fan of a Page, by clicking the Become a Fan button.
2. Groups can be set up by anyone on any topic - so they may be about an organisation, but not necessarily run by them. Some groups are open to all, others need approval before you can join. Looking at the details will tell you about the membership criteria.

So, when you search for an organisation or topic, you'll need to use your evaluation skills to decide which one you want to join.

1. Login to Facebook
2. In the search box at the top, type in National Library of Wales
3. Look at the top two searches and decide which is the official one and which one isn't.

You can join the group or become a fan if you want to!

Next steps

Have a look for an organisation or issue relating to your work. If you want to, become a fan or join a group.

If you don't have a FB account

If you aren't part of Facebook, you may wonder what it's all about - or maybe you have decided that you don't want to share your personal life online. If you're in the first category, then you might want to take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc whihc is an introduction to social networking in plain English - it's only 1min 48 secs!

If you do decide to join Facebook, you should make sure that you think carefully about the privacy settings when you start out - there are lots of settings to make sure that only the people you want to see your information see it ... Also, have a chat with some Facebook users to find out what they get out of using it.

Your thoughts

If you have followed the FB exercise, tell us (by commenting on this post), what pages or groups you found. Also, you could also let us know what it is that you find useful about using the site.

If you aren't a Facebook member, let us know what you think about social networking - are you tempted to give it a try?

Become a blogger

Having read some blogs, maybe you think it's time to write one yourself? If so, then it's pretty straight-forward to do.

This exercise uses Blogger (the service I'm using the write this blog) - http://www.blogger.com/. Before you start creating your own blog, you'll need to sign up for the service. If you already have a Google account (and you can remember the password!), you can use that.

Before you put fingers to keyboard, have a think about the following:

1. What's your blog going to be about?
2. Remember that a blog isn't a one-off thing - in order to keep people coming back, you'll need to keep adding postings (http://northxeast.com/blogging/8-rules-to-develop-the-habit-of-blogging/ for more information).
3. How much information do you want to give about yourself?
4. How are you going to handle comments - do you want to moderate all comments before they can be posted?
5. Have some ideas for your first post worked out ready to type in.

Once you have got the ideas for your blog worked out, you can make a start:

1. Load up Blogger in your Web browser
2. If you already have a Google account, login using the boxes at the top of the screen
3. Click on the Create Blog link
4. Give your blog a name - this is the title of your blog
5. Choose a URL (Web address). This can be based on the title and will be the address you can give to people who want to read your blog.
6. Click Continue
7. Choose yourself a theme - this is how the blog will look. Don't worry about getting it perfect right from the start, as you can change it later.
8. Click Start Blogging
9. You are now ready to write your first post ...

Next Steps

Write your first post. Then comment on this post, giving us the URL. We'll link to your blog from ours.

Your Thoughts

Now you you have your own blog, write a blog post about what you think of blogging:

• Will you carry on blogging?
• Is this useful for work or your personal interests?

Remember to let us know the address of your blog so that we can link to it.

Hunt the blog

As you're reading this blog, we can assume that you have read a least one blog!

There are lots of blogs out there, some useful and others less so. But how do you find relevant blogs, how do you keep up-to-date with postings?

For this exercise, we're going to look at locating blogs:

1. Think about the organisations that you deal with for your work - chances are that at least one will have a blog. So, the first thing to do is take a look at their Web site. For example, I deal a lot with Questionmark Perception (http://www.questionmark.com/uk/). Looking at their homepage, under About, I can see a link to their blog.
2. Have a look at some of the companies and organisations you deal and see whether they have a blog. Some suggestions:


• Ex Libris: http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/Home
• Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/blog/
• RSC-Wales: http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk/blogs.asp

That's a pretty time-consuming way of looking for blogs - wouldn't it be easier if there were a directory of blogs .... Wait - there is!

Technorati (http://technorati.com/) indexes blogs around the Web and allows you to search for blogs and blog postings. It also has a directory of blogs catalogued by various subjects.

Next steps

Take a look at Technorati and find a blog that is relevant to your work.

Your thoughts

Let us know about the blog you found by commenting on this post - include the URL (by copying and pasting from the address bar of your browser).

Organisational Tools

There are a number of tools available which can help with work. Many of these are particularly useful for collaborative projects, which may include colleagues from other institutions. Here are a few of the E-learning Team's favourites:

• Meet-o-matic: http://www.meetomatic.com/ Particularly useful for organising meetings with staff who don't use shared Outlook calendars or staff from other institutions. All you have to do is set up a selection of dates in meet-o-matic and then circulate an email with a link to your meet-o-matic page. People select the dates they can attend and meet-o-matic tells you the best date. Saves circulating hundreds of emails ... hurrah!
• Google Docs - http://docs.google.com/ Access to online document editing and sharing. Google Documents allows you to create word documents, PDF files etc online. They are also saved to your own Web-based file space giving you both read and edit access at any location. Files can also be shared with others for collaborative working. You can also created spreadsheets and presentations.
• Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/ Create Word clouds from any piece of text (see Wikipedia for a definition of Word clouds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud). They can be used to good effect to show the concepts within a piece of writing.

Next steps

Explore some of the tools listed above and see what they can do for you. Have a look at the 'tours' of the products to get some ideas about how and when you may want to use them.

Your thoughts

Let us know what you think about online organisational tools by commenting on this post. Some questions to get you started:

• Which was your favourite tool?
• Do you think you would use these for work/personal use?
• Do you have any suggestions to add to the list?

Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking web site.

It allows users to keep their bookmarks on a central Web site (rather than on an individual computer) allowing for easy access away from the office. However, its strength lies in the ability to tag links, add notes and share these with others.

Delicious can be found at http://delicious.com/

The site can provide you with a way of seeing what Web resources other people think are useful, and view their notes on the sites. As with the other sites we are looking at today, you can view content without signing up. However, if you wish to create your own list of links you will need to create an account.

1. Load up Delicious in your Web browser
2. Take a look at the tour of the site at http://delicious.com/help/learn
3. Search for Web 2.0 in the search box

When you see the results for this search you will see:

• The name of the resource (which is a link to the site itself)
• How many other Delicious users have saved this link
• The username of the first person to save it to Delicious

If you want to view the links collected by an individual you can click on their username,

You might want to have a look at the links collected by is_alto or rscwales (hint: have a look under the People link)

Next steps

Have a look for some links that might be useful in your work, either by searching for a person or a topic.

Your thoughts

Let us know what you think about Delicious by commenting on this post. Some questions to get you started:

• What do you think about Delicious?
• Can you see any uses in the work you do?
• Are you tempted to create yourself an account?