Monday, March 23, 2009

my very own wiki

Surprisingly, creating my own wiki using Wetpaint proved to be painless... and it looks like my other blogs! :p The interface looked really easy, it has tabs for just about everything you'd want to do on it. Talk about idiot's guide to creating your own wiki. I haven't had a lot of time to explore this new found "techie thing" under my belt, but I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun figuring it out.

The ads do take up about 1/4 (total) of my page, which is a shame but alas necessary for the site. I did see the instructions on how to take away the ads... something I'd try out next time and give an update later.

Wetpaint gives you a lot of leeway in terms of customization... something else to explore later. I think I might keep this one for my graduate class. It looks nicer and appear to be easier to use than PBWiki (at least for me).

http://marawiki.wetpaint.com/

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

wiki-ing my way to...?

Wikis... collaborative websites... Wikipedia. Hmmm...

I know there are more wikis (what is the plural form of this word? if it is a word) than Wikipedia, but I just wrote it down because this one seems to be the most widely used by almost everyone. Why? Because it contains information. Never mind that sometimes the information does not seem accurate, it can still provide you with a starting point with which to focus your research.

A wiki is a great tool that can be used for collaboration... at times, but not all the time. I say this because no matter how specific the community you've created (when it comes to access), and no matter how convenient using a wiki is because you don't even have to get up from where you're sitting, I still think face-to-face collaboration works the best.

I love my laptop and I love surfing the internet, but there is a certain formality in the way one communicates things over the net that is absent when people interact personally. I guess I'm old fashioned in that way. I like to see people's faces when they agree or disagree with each other because it gives you an idea on how they really feel about an issue. Not to mention I think face-to-face collaborations tend to draw more creative juices from each individual than merely posting it on the wiki.

I do so love technology, but I would not want to totally elliminate the people aspect of collaboration.

RSS feeds

I was already subscribed to a few RSS feeds even before strating in this class, mostly news. I like it because it gives me a truncated version of what's new or if indeed something new has come up with the sites I like to follow. This way, I don't need to visit the sites if nothing new has been added or if what's been added is not really of interest to me.

I know a lot of libraries already use RSS feeds on their website. This is a great idea to let patrons know what's going on in their local libraries. Announcements for upcoming events can be sent via RSS feed and one need not worry of sending out too many notices because the patron have chosen to receive such notifications. Just like statistics, this is a way for libraries to monitor how many patrons are being reached.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Delicious

First of all, I am curious as to why this social bookmarking site is called Delicious. While I understand what Delicious is trying to help me accomplish, that is to organize my bookmarks and be able to share it as well as create some form of tagging, it still did not answer why its called Delicious. But I guess its just a choice of name for instant recall... although I don't think of social bookmarking when I think of the word. but that's just me.

As is expected, though to some starting to use Delicious might be easy, being no techie, I did encounter some difficulty in using the site. I did open my own account and tried using it, but I had such frustration in trying to bundle my tags that I had to give up... sorry. I wish I had more patience in trying this one out, but since I rarely bookmark anything on my own computer, I find that this is not for me.

Don't get me wrong. I do see how convenient it is, but I think I'd stick to following someone else's bookmarks than to create my own.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

catching up

I am terribly behind this class, so sorry.

I've just signed up with Delicious. Not much there yet but am figuring out how things work. I saw the short video Rebecca has graciously provided to introduce us all to this social bookmarking network and found it very informational, even for someone technologically challenged as me. I'm a bit frustrated though... when I type in my tags, delicious insists on breaking it up into single words when what I wanted to do was bunch them together (e.g. Learning 2.0, comes up as 2.0 and Learning). There must be a way to do this... but that's for another post as I try to discover how things work on this newly (for me) found technology.