Web 2.0: Read, Discuss, Contribute, Collaborate.

As far as the end-user is concerned, the difference between a wiki and a blog is that in a blog, each post by a contributor is kept separate.  Access could be set so multiple users could edit a post, but there is no mechanism for tracking the changes.

In a wiki each collabotator is tracked as to what is modified.  Difference and comparisons in versions can easily be inspected with the final product being a single document.

There are several disciplines requiring student collaboration where a wiki could be seamlessly integrated into a course.  The first is the lab sciences.  There students work as teams and often produce one laboratory report.  The wiki a natural medium for the collaborative report.  The instructor could easily identify the student contributions, which student is taking the lead in editing and such.

The second area is in computer courses.  A wiki is a perfect tool where software engineering can be implemented.  Several student programmers could use a wiki to implement a program far greater than any one student could.  For years, I have taught such courses and implement software engineering protocols.  In the spring of 07, I plan on using a wiki to develop code in two classes, CMP 220: Analysis of Computer Archetecture and Software  and CMP 217: The C Programming Language so stay tuned.

By R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

In an all too familiar scenario, a faculty member schedules a library session for students to gain experience with library resources and research techniques.  The students are confronted with a lecture on research tools, search techniques, formats, databases, and catalogs.  A few of the students retain part of the information, but for others, it is soon forgotten because information not reinforced is often lost.   From the students’ perspective, the librarian becomes just another member of the campus rather than a resource, a mentor, a teacher, someone who can be sought out when questions arise. Some students will return to the librarian for assistance with future projects while many will struggle with Google and cite questionable sources.  

Boolean logic has long (since the computer) been the main-stay of both high school and college curricula.  Often students fail to see the logic of studying such.  “Where will I ever need this?” they ask.  The current curricula lack the real-world application of the rows of truth tables, laws and equivalencies and without practice and motivation to re-enforce the properties and students soon forget all they learn. 

The goal here was to provide the missing link, to join together the practical research techniques needed with the abstract mathematical theory and present it in a formal Information Literacy setting.   That missing link is the Computer Science area of database access that incorporates the underlying logical operators, and, or and not along with their set theory equivalences union, intersection and complement.  These operators are what one uses to retrieve the information from a database. 

After the learning the basics of Boolean algebra, an Information Literacy session is scheduled with the library and the students are introduced to the databases.  An assignment consisting of research topics / terms that one might find in a GLA course is presented.  These terms are presented using the formal structure of Boolean algebra. Since students have been introduced to the simple (statements that are true or false) and compound statements (simple statements connected with Boolean operators they only need to translate and apply them to the database.   They are then asked to compare the number of hits they obtained when formulate the queries in database syntax.  For example, if d = death and p = penalty, the students are asked to determine the hits for d /\ p (where /\ is the notation for and in the mathematical setting).  They submit queries such as  death and penalty along with death penalty and are asked compare the results to the simple statement “death penalty”  Future assignments will ask the student to re-write queries using equivalent laws such as DeMorgans Law.  Other assignments stress the importance of parenthesis and precedence of operators while others will ask the student to develop their own queries and write them in both the database syntax and formal mathematical structure.

Information is only useful when one can find and collate it.  The students of today are faced with an exponential amount of information along with a growing access to it. Portals such as Google or Wikipedia allow anyone to retrieve and create information.  A careless or non-precise query (or search) can easily return hits (or references) in numbers in excess of six digits.  Still, this incentive falls short.  Today, anyone with Internet access can add to Wikipedia.  What was once only “Have server space?  Then you too can create a web page expressing whatever opinion you have “ we now see blogs springing up everywhere.  Who are these bloggers?  Who are writing those feeds?  What are the qualifications to be a guide on About.com (my students found out) or contribute to Wikipedia? This is not to say that these sites should not be trusted but rather the person of tomorrow must know not only how to find the information but to evaluate it and use it ethically. 

A wiki is a collaborative website that allows multiple contributors and/or visitors to add, delete and edit content on a particular webpage quickly and easily.  Generally, no coding or HTML knowledge is necessary. Named after the wiki wiki bus in Honolulu, the term means quick in Hawaiian.  Features include  an edit tab, a discussion tab, and history of changes tab.  Businesses and organizations employ wikis to disseminate information and work collaboratively. In academic settings,  departments and committees use the technology to develop reports,  write policy statements and author curriculum material.  Students work on team projects, create lab reports and develop research assignments.

There are two basic ways to get started with a wiki. You can use a web-based wiki farm that hosts your wiki on its server, or you can download wiki software to your own server.  The first is simple but does not have a great deal of flexibility, while the second offers more customization but requires a higher level of expertise.  Check out  the examples below, some of which are  free, some fee-based, and some  free but with a premium version.

Web Hosted Wiki Farms

http://pbwiki.com
http://wikia.com
http://www.wetpaint.com
http://www.seedwiki.com

Wiki Software 
http://twiki.org
http://tikiwiki.org
http://www.pmwiki.org 

By R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

Every semester, every one of us has a few good students that we wish we could push (or lead) a little farther, have them go that extra mile, show them to recognize that important question and answer it.  In a traditional classroom setting, it is somewhat difficult and unmanageable.  Often your suggestions (or ideas) are lost or forgotten in the mayhem of the semester.  These questions (comments) are something you might not have time to cover (1) or even think about until someone’s posts trigger the idea (2).  It could be the old ” hey good question- look that up and get back to the class” but then we forget and they never do. By having the student’s blog their assignments, the instructor can individualize follow-up suggestions using the comment feature, on their work (3) (4), (5).  With the comment appearing after the students post, both the student and instructor have a running history and dialog.  Other students may become involved in the discussion (5). 

Students are at home in this environment, they have fun and when they learn something new, they  adapt it to thier space. (6) (7).  

We must realize that the “sage on the stage” model is done and that collaboration is not just between faculty members but among faculty and students.  The student will see first hand the first question we generate when we learn.  It is collaboration between student and faculty member in an environment that extends beyond the classroom.  References / examples

1. Comment by Richard Glass on Tower of Hanoi overviewA reference made in post about Seagate Technology applying the Towers of Hanoi algorithm for backups as applied to a home user. 
2. Richard Glass comment Coincidence????? on multiple posts for a calculus 3 assignment where both Kenneth Abbel and Arthur Abbel were cited as leaders in the commonality of computer generated graphics asking were they related.
3. M. Spiegelmans post on researching the reliability of Wikipedia.
4. M. Spiegelmans post on About.com.
5. Receiving RSS Feeds to the Desktop and subsequent follow-ups by Bernie, geshev, Prof. Spiegelman and Richard Glass.
6. Gary suggesting that he has done an A paper.
7. Irene, a GLA student writing computer instructions and then using those instructions to better organize her time.

By R. Glass

As I mentioned in my other post, I was looking for a way to incorporate Information Literacy into courses that would not normally have a strong Information Literacy component. I chose three courses in the fall of 2006 where the use of a  blog would augment the syllabus.

The first course was the general liberal arts course, MAT 101: Logic, Sets and Numbers.   In that course, the students learn about Boolean operators, their relationships and properties in an abstract setting.  In Information Literacy, databases use the Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) as the tools used to generate effective and concise searches (queries in the database world).  My objective was to tie the abstract syntax and mathematical properties of the Boolean operators as taught in the  MAT 101 course to the real world application of the same operators as applied to various information databases.  The rationale for this can bee seen as a post under the contribute category on this blog application of this can be seen in the blog glassrmat101.wordpress.com.

The other two courses were second year computer science and mathematics degree courses.  These courses act as a gateway to upper level courses where often research of topics is required.  My goal here was to ease that transition to tough research by not just introducing the fundamental tools and concepts of Information Literacy but also providing the foundation of ethical.  The topics researched should be interesting, informative and readily available.  I wanted reinforce the process rather than the results but at the same time, introducing the student to the humanity of the discipline.  The motivation for these assignments can be found in my post If I Had Known Then … in this blog. 

In computer science, algorithms are sometimes attributed to a person, place or occurrence.  Myself, I wondered who was Eratosthenes in the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm for finding prime numbers, what exactly was the legend behind the Towers Of Hanoi, an algorithm exhibiting recursion.  I looked to topics that had such a duality to them.  One part was the actual algorithm and second required the student to research the legend, person or place that made up the name.  The results of these assignments can be viewed in the blog for the CMP 207: Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming glassr.wordpress.com.

Calculus 3 is the first course where the student is asked to do mathematics beyond the blackboard.  Students are asked to visualize three dimensional surfaces, consider maps and the information contained within both explicitly and implicitly.  The formal proof of much of the mathematics in these topics within course is well beyond the capability of the student at that level but the understanding of the problem is not.  The goal here was to introduce the student to these classical problems and blog about what they were.  The results can be seen in the glassrcalc3.wordpress.com blog.

I cordially invite other members to not only suggest assignments but implement them and not only in mathematics or computer science but all disciplines.

 How many times have you read a great article and mentioned it in class, only to be greeted by a sea of blank stares? Certainly students can be given a URL and asked to pull up the content.   What if you could guarantee that your students would have access to the latest article from the Science Times before class? Now that you understand how to locate your favorite feeds and bring them to your homepage or aggregator, you have the ability to push this content to your students.  If you want them to read a specific feed for class discussion you have several options:

1. Put the RSS feed on your webpage and direct students to that site.
2. Insert the RSS feed on your WebCT page with one of several simple tools available. (see the Tools, Tips, and Tricks category.)
3. Show students how to subscribe to specific feeds on their homepage, myspace page, or aggregator of their choice.  Students are familiar with the technology and use it regularly.

When students use feeds to push content to “their space“, it becomes a part of their reality and “their space” is transformed into a “learning space.” How can you increase this transformation?  Read the post on feeding hungry students!

Blogs contain primarily two types of electronic documents (WordPress has  three but more on that later).  The two main types are Posts and Comments.

Posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, that is the latest is listed first.  They are categorized into categories which can be found in the right hand column.  Clicking on the category will show the posts in the category.  Depending on the settings, either the entire post will show or the first few lines.  I have set this blog to display an entire post.  You can navigate between posts with the arrows on top of the post.

Each post can have comments attached to it.  Comments are displayed in chronological order, meaning the earliest is shown first.  At the end of a post, you will see a box that says Leave a Comment.

WordPress supports a third type of presentation called a Page.  A page is static in that there is no hierarchy in terms of posts although you may comment on a page.  Typically, a page is used for an about, who the authors are, etc.

A blog can be read by pointing your browser to this web site, rmweb20.wordpress.com or reading the posts and comments via an RSS feed.  For the URL of the feed, see the bottom right hand column for the RSS post feed and RSS comment feed URLs.

No, this is not a spin on the dog ate my homework but rather using an RSS feed to syndicate your assignments, notes and/or announcements and have them pushed right to your students homepage or RSS reader.

I do not believe in providing the entire homework list for the semester.  Instead, I prefer to give out assignments piecemeal as this allows me to add or subtract assignments based in individual classes.
Back In The Old (Web 1.0) Days

When the web first appeared, I saw that I could be more productive by supplying my assignments and notes via a webpage.  I found that students read the assignments before coming to class leading to more thoughtful questions on them which better utilized the lecture time.   After one semester, I had a master webpage of homework assignments from which I would cut and paste the particular assignment to the active page and/or add additional assignments.  At first the student would check the page often but as the Internet became more commonplace, I found myself saying there is a new assignment out on the web everyday, which was followed by what is it.

If you are like me, spending time asking your students to pull your material from a webpage, then you are ready to deliver (push) your assignments, announcements, and / or class notes to them via an RSS feed.  Creating an RSS feed is no more difficult than creating a web page.   The advantage is that they become available to them whenever you syndicate the assignment.  Students can get their homework assignments delivered right to their homepage or aggregator, even on the weekend, wherever they are.

How to create your own feed / syndicate your handouts with RSS.

The simple way, create a blog that only you can post to.  By their very nature, a blog can be syndicated into a feed.   If you look at the bottom right hand corner of this blog (rmweb20.wordpress.com) under Meta you will see Entries RSS and Comments RSS.  Both of these are feeds that can be subscribed to. 

The second way is a more technical way and might appeal to some.  The requirements are simply requiring web space for your web pages and XML files. (which you have if you are currently creating webpages).

You will need to have:

• Individual webpage’s for your content / assignments.
• A program to create the XML (that babble you see when you click on the orange button).   This is a single webpage that ties together all your posts.

Warning, for those who like to instant gratification when uploading a webpage, such is not the case with creating your own syndicated site.  It may take your aggregator (different aggregators have different update times) some time before it updates your feed and the new item becomes available.

RSSeditor v0.9.54: (http://www.rss-info.com)

Pros:  Nice Interface, inexpensive.

Cons: Writes out proprietary project file.  Can not (or at least what I found) import or export prior RSS projects.

FeedForAll: (http://www.feedforall.com/Pros. It grows on you.

Cons.  Somewhat expensive at $50, does not upload your content pages, somewhat cryptic.

Software, References and Links to Web 2.0

Feel free to add your own via comment.

RSS

• Coffeecup
  • Inexpensive RSS/web software packages
• feed2js.org/  
  • Add an RSS feed to your page.
• www.feedforall.com/ 
  • Create an RSS feed from your content.
• glassr.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/do-i-have-to-bookmark-add-to-favorites-this-site/
  • Add an RSS feed to your Optimum OnLine Homepage.
• feeddemon
  • An inexpensive, windows-based feed reader
• Omea Reader
  • Free newsreader and bookmark manager
• Google Reader
  • A good newsreader, but you must sign up for a free Google email (gmail) account to use it.

Blog

• WordPress.com
  • Currently the host site for this the course blogs
• Blogger.com
  • Googles’s Blog.
• Bloglines.com
  • Nice site in that it is both a blog site and an RSS aggregator.  You can have public (share the feeds you subscribe to) and private RSS feeds.  It also allows commenting on the feed articles.

Wiki

How To

Other Web 2.0 References

technorati : http://technorati.com. A website that searches for blogs by keywords.

del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/ A social bookmarking website.  See what others are tagging; keep track of your own

flikr: http://flikr.com A site to store, search and share images.

digg: http://digg.comA user-driven social website.  Content is submitted and voted on by the user community.

blinkbits: http://blinkbits.com Share, locate links,  pieces of information, images, blogs, etc.

magnolia: http://ma.gnolia.com Tag, share, organize bookmarks with others.

Articles

Bryant, Todd. “Social Networking in Academia ” Educause Quarterly  2006.  15 May 2007. < http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0627.asp&gt;

Williams, Jeremy B, and Joann Jacobs.  “Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector” Australian Journal of Educational Technology 2004. 15 May 2007. <http–www.jeremybwilliams.net-AJETpaper.pdf>

Augar, Naomi, Ruth Raitman and Wanlei Zhou. Teaching and Learning Online with Wikis 14 Nov.2004. 15 May 2007. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html

Alexander, Bryan. “Using Technology In Teaching And Learning: Resources To Help You Navigate A Digital World” C&RL News, Feb. 2007. 12 May 15, 2007.  <http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/february07/ techteachlearn.htm>

 The explosion of information on the web is a blessing and a curse, with too many sources  and too little time.  To keep up, many of us bookmark our favorite sites and hop from page to page, looking for the latest updates. Now with RSS, you can scan the latest information from all those sites from a single page.

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a way for content providers  to disseminate  updated information on the web.  Much as you might subscribe to a print publication and receive the latest issue of the New York Times, with RSS you can subscribe to all or part of the digital version,and have it brought to your desktop.  Do you also read the Washington Post, Time magazine,  your favorite journal or Dilbert? Add them to your list of feeds and get the latest updates in the same place.

Using the XML format, websites provide an “easy button”  ( that ubiquitous orange icon,     )  which allows you to pull their content to  you. You might wish to use a website that collects or aggregates your feeds such as bloglines,  or you could insert the feeds as live bookmarks right into your personalized homepage or  course authoring site. 

RSS allows you to  stay current, have your students stay current, and add dynamic content to class discussions.