Blogging

I was glad to have had the opportunity to participate in this blogging exercise. I had previously been curious about blogging, and didn’t really understand what a blog was. I’d never read a blog.
I didn’t even know how to find a blog.

This was a great setting in which to explore blogging. Many of the students appeared to start out at the same level in which I existed- the newbie level. My inexperience with this communication form initially created a feeling of vulnerability for me. It was only a short time, however, until I felt pretty comfortable.

I liked having a group of four students to bounce ideas around with. I can see why people become cyberbuddies. Personalities start to show over time, and I looked forward to the contact that we had. I learned a lot about some interesting technologies, and had some laughs. Frequently, when I learn about a new twist in 2.0 technology, I don’t understand why we would want this new twist. The blog discussions really helped with that kind of question. It was particularly fun because the group member that was introducing the technology was also new to it, so as she discovered characteristics and uses for it, she shared them with us. We were discovering it together. When one of us asked another group member a question about their technology, the question gave the researcher/ instructor (another title for the group member) a different direction in which to go. I do love the discovery process, how one thought or discovery takes you to other thoughts and discoveries, which then might take you to a place you could never originally have imagined.

I enjoyed sharing information and thoughts about my technologies with the rest of the group. Researching the topic, knowing that there were three other women waiting (with baited breath!) for the next installment gave the search a bit of a personality. I asked myself what might be interesting to all of the group members (including me). I found the Elgg topic to be more of a challenge than iTunes U. I was fortunate to have found EduSpaces, since it utilized Elgg in a broad topic that was of interest to my entire blogging group.

During this exercise I discovered that I had actually run across blogs before, but just didn’t know it. When I have Googled a topic in the past, I’ve thought some of the results were “weird”, because instead of being a website or article, it was like this person babbling (in text) about the topic. It seemed as though I had cut into a personal conversation, and that the information was certainly useless for my purposes (I wanted facts, or scholarly papers!). I didn’t make the connection between these results and blogs until I took this class.

I have found some interesting blogs in which I would consider participating in the future. In our field, blogging could help ease the aloneness that a librarian might feel in her solitary library position, especially if she didn’t feel a lot of support from the administration. The support that blogging buddies could provide might prove vital to a librarian’s job happiness, and the information exchanged could be the difference between an effective program and an inspired (and effective) program.

I noticed that only once during the whole semester did a person from outside the class join in on one of our blogs. I still find myself asking, “Why would somebody be interested in reading a blog entry from me (if it wasn’t a class requirement)? This could be answered by realizing that the more I participate within ongoing topic threads, the deeper my thought or topic exploration becomes. I will then perhaps hit on an idea that others would like to hear about and explore further with me.

Brooke

IT-enabled Cheating

Hello, all. Second to the last post for this class...

This week we discussed IT-enabled cheating. IT could make it easier to cheat, but the same IT can also make it easy to detect cheating. Best not to cheat…

One article we read for this topic was written by a person that discussed some universities that were allowing the use of IT during exams. This person considered it legalized cheating. Basically, the permissible use of IT during an exam is an electronic version of the open-book test. This is not cheating.

Brooke

E-Rate

It's been interesting to learn about a technology funding source called E-Rate. Although the money has a history of disappearing into people's pockets, this funding has the potential of bringing much needed funding to needy schools. The program provides services to schools at a reduced rate. The percentage of discount awarded to a school, after a lengthy and complicated application process, is determined by the percentage of the student population that is participating in the free or reduced breakfast/lunch program.

Here is a link to the program's website. Make sure your school looks into this funding source. http://www.usac.org/sl/

Brooke

EduSpaces Explored

Eduspaces has been very interesting. When you go to the website, the opening page contains thumbnails or some graphic and names or usernames of about 20 members that have been brought up randomly. You can click on any of them to go to their page. You can then see their interests. If you click upon one of their interest tags, you are taken to another subset of members with the same tag listed under their interests. Theses are mostly education-related interests.

One can also browse the members by user or communities. When you join you can join EduSpace communities that are focused upon your particular interests. I've provided the EduSpaces link to enable you to explore a bit. I think you'll find some interesting discussions.

http://eduspaces.net/

Brooke

Webinars and Cybersecurity

This week we talked about Webinars in our class. Access to Webinars is very exciting to me, because I am an info-maniac (careful how you say that!)! I do love to learn things, and these are generally free for the taking! When I have time (in the year 2038!), I will have a lot of fun with them. Actually, when I become a librarian, I envision having time to utilize information more than ever, since that's supposed to be the main focus of the job.

So, Cybersecurity...

This week I received a phishing email from people that were pretending to be with FedEx. It said that I needed to contact them about a package delivery. The thing that almost sucked me in was that I was expecting a package handled by them. The things that were phishy, however, were: It was from a Mrs. somebody, it had a contact phone number that included a country code, and the email address had Nigeria in the address. Why are these scams so aften from Nigeria, when there are so many other countries in the world? Anyhow, it got forwarded to the company, and the two reporting addresses that we were provided in our class last week. End of story.

Brooke

Eduspaces

This week I joined Eduspaces, powered by Elgg. It was simple, unlike the horror stories I've heard. Now I'v e got to figure out what I rfeally want to do with it!

I happened upon this video in Eduspaces of an instructor that wants to start a discussion about "Blended Learning". Besides the exploration of the format of this Elgg, that question interested me. I'd never heard of blended learning, and he wants to define it, or assign parameters to it in order to identify it as such.

http://app.sightspeed.com/vm/5shegifpfqpgq2iv1u4wkknenq8yy9eg/240w/en_US/1/

Brooke

Teaching Children Cyber Security and Ethics

The above titled article, written by White, and published by the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (July, 2005) points out that there are a number of organizations that are working on educating the public in Cyber Awareness. The term "Cyber Awareness" includes Cyber Security, Ethics and Safety. A number of problems need to be dealt with, however, for these efforts to be useful. There is no centralized organization providing standardized information, or standards for teaching this information, most notably to K-12 school children. The funding that these organizations receive is spent in parallel projects, working toward the same goals. The funding needs to be centralized, and the efforts of these groups brought together to more effectively and efficiently achieve the common goal. It is suggested that a national Cyber Awareness Program (CAP) be developed, that a few branded websites be used to provide the CAP information, that high grade multimedia be made to teach Cyber Awareness, that both private and public funding be combined to achieve the CAP goals, and that the National Cyber Security Alliance be the organization to perform these tasks.

I was relieved to read this article, as I can see the need for simplifying access to important Cyber Security/Safety/Ethics information. The schools that I have been recently associated with have no Cyber Awareness education going on at all. The development of CAP standards and curriculum is desperately needed, and will, I beliece, be greatfully received by K-12 schools.

University using Elgg

Hello all,

I have come across another helpful description of Elgg, in the form of a checklist, which adds to and clarifies the information that we already have about it.

Features:

Blogging Social networking
File repositories for individuals and communities Podcast support
Full access controls Supports tagging
User profiles Full RSS support
RSS aggregator Create communities
Collaborative community blogs Create 'friends' networks
Import content Publish to blog
Multilingual Branding/customisation
OpenID support

Along with this checklist, this link contains a statement written by a university that is using Elgg in a big way. Within two weeks of the university's implementation of Elgg they had a very active and interesting blogging community. There are currently 36,000 students and staff registered for Elgg. The format of Elgg has made it simple to intigrate with the colleg's existing programs for registration and courses. As well as its informal use as a social networking tool, it is being used more formally within courses at the university.

http://elgg.org/features.php

I'm thinking more and more about how to use it in a k-12 setting. It has a reputation of being very difficult to get set up and register, so that appears to be a significant hurtle to get over. Once set up, however, it is a highly thought-of program. This week I'm going to try to get through the registration hurtle, and see if I can get something going.

Brooke