1) From last time, you were asked to have a look at this wiki from the Science Museum, this one dedicated to Lenovo ThinkPads and this one from a School of Architecture. Your blog post of about 300 words should now be complete, saying what you think of these examples (whether they show signs of active life, what you take away from each — what have you learned that is new to you about wikis, how they're being used and how they function) and what you deduced about good wiki practice. We'll spend a few minutes discussing your prep and what you wrote. We'll also be interested to hear about other wikis you found. 2) From earlier in the course, you'll recall that data like these wikis and Google Docs doesn't live on someone's hard drive but "in the cloud". Keeping your data and programs online means it's available anywhere from any machine and this is a key attraction driving the adoption of such apps. Wikipedia defines cloud-computing like this:  Cloud computing is Internet-based ("cloud") development and use of computer technology ("computing"). The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet, based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams, and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.[1] It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”,[2] allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud")[3] without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.[4] "Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, tablet computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc."[5] Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers. Major companies are investing heavily in this: eg, Dell, MS Live SkyDrive, Amazon EC2, Google (GDrive — and here). Google has also developed Google Gears, a way of synchronising data between online servers and a local machine. Google Gears worked first just with Google Reader but will be rolled out to other Google Apps such as Gmail, Calendar, etc. At the same time as these companies are doing this, hardware manufacturers are creating devices that are highly portable and capable of handling web-based files and apps: notebooks, mini-books, smartphones, the iPodtouch, iPhones ... One of the things you should be aware of is that whilst putting your data in the cloud brings a lot of convenience, it does mean that stuff you value is then entrusted to someone else. (If that just sounds like a really bad idea, ask yourself who's better at backing up your data: you … or, say, Google? When did you last backup your data?) The best approach may be to exploit the cloud, but also keep a local copy of your data. Expect to see much more from both Google and Microsoft in this area, but right now there's a great tool for this — and it's free (up to 2Gb): Dropbox. One knowledgeable user, Michael Lopp, says of Dropbox: The magic of Dropbox is that it doesn’t ask you to think about what you do. You care about one thing: do I have access to the most recent version of my files? And with Dropbox, yes, you do. Wherever you are, so are your files. As Lopp says, Dropbox "keep[s] track of each discrete file operation", syncing between your desktop[s]/laptop and the cloud. It's brilliant and is a great way of backing up your work and other important files. If you decide to use it, at school you'll need to access it (on school machines) via a browser. (In fact, when at school and using your own portable machine, you'll probably find it easiest to use a browser. The desktop app, or client, may not work across our firewall.) 3) Firefly is a wiki-capable application. Our website is written in it, as is our intranet. The latter is a protected wiki: it's behind a login and then individual pages are viewable and/or editable by different people, according to a system of permissions: some pages (eg, the Politics homepage) are collaboratively edited by staff and pupils. In the new version, 2.4, there will be much more emphasis placed on Firefly's wiki-ness — with staff/pupil co-edited pages, comment-enabled pages that you will be able to write to and class blogs (~ wikis). For this lesson your teacher will create a page on the ICT Dept section of Firefly, so that you can see how commenting works. He'll also explain the idea of page ownership in Firefly. Pretty soon, you may find some of your other teachers creating pages where you can comment, read the homework (or find an RSS feed for this), read extra stuff that he/she posts about the work you're doing. And you may be invited to co-edit pages or take responsibility for running the page. (By the way, if you haven't already added it to Google Reader, here's the RSS feed for the public St Paul's News: http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/rss/guest/newssource/2 .) 4) What about the future of blogging? As we'll see in prep and next week's lesson, microblogging is proving very popular (and fits people's busy lifestyles). But blogging is far from dying, let alone dead. For a very good overview, from the man who created Blogger and then sold it to Google, we'll look at What Blogger Should Do. (And have a look at this, too.) Finally, as of today (20.1.2009):   This is the last lesson on blogs and wikis and it may be as good a place as any to take a breather, reflect — and ready ourselves for what's ahead: Prep: What can you find out about Twitter and Jaiku?
These are often called microblogging tools. Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku,
has a useful slide here of the sweep that blogging now covers, from microblogging
to much longer forms of blogging. (You can follow his full,
original slideshow.) What other forms of microblogging can you think of — maybe you use one or more of them already? Write a blog post (300 words) about microblogging. Don't overlook the importance of mobile technologies in microblogging. Can things microblog? (Clueful links: Mars Rover Twitter; Tower Bridge Twitter; River Thames Twitter; houseplants ....) |
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Lesson 16: Blogs and wikis IV |