What is expected of me if I participate?
You are expected to use this blog to find out which tasks are currently available, and then to complete the tasks.

You will also be expected to write at least one blog entry about the tasks you completed for each topic, beginning with the Blogs and Blogging topic. Your blog entry may be directly related to one of the tasks or it may be about something that has occurred to you as a result of doing the tasks.

We also hope that you will read the blogs of other participants and leave comments for them.

Do I have to stick to the schedule?
No, the schedule is strictly a guideline. You are welcome to do any of the tasks as soon as they are posted. You will probably fall behind from time to time due to work and vacation schedules and that's OK. We have scheduled many of the topic areas for two weeks to build in some catch-up time.

What do I get if I complete all the tasks?
Well, apart from learning more about this thing called Web 2.0, you'll get to come to a party! Details on the party will be announced later in the summer. But I'm assured there will be cake.

To help us form an understanding of the Web 2.0 look at the following:

* What is Web 2.0 by Tim O'Rielly at oriellynet.com
* a communal definition/overview of Web 2.0 from Wikipedia
* a video explanation of Web 2.0 and a video response to the explanation.

After reviewing the linked resources please leave a comment on what you think Web 2.0 is, ask a question about Web 2.0, or provide the URL of another resource attempting to explain Web 2.0. Feel free to respond to other people's comments, too.

The blogging phenomenon really took off with the 2004 presidential election when Howard Dean brought the blog to mainstream America as a major piece of his campaign's communication and fund raising system. Blogging has permeated most areas of popular culture as people are using blogs to communicate with friends and family, as sources of news, in education, to form communities around a personal interest, etc..

The diverse application of blogs is also prevalent at Allegheny as blogs are used as departmental websites, for personal writing and reflection, in support of the study abroad experience, tracking projects and committee work, project development, and classwork.

Blogging has established itself as a cornerstone of Web2.0 culture because of its ease of use and ability to connect people with one another. Thus, blogging will be central to our Learning 2.0 project. Become a blogger by completing the following tasks.

Task #1: Get a blog of your own and post to it.

Task #2: Send us the URL of your blog for inclusion on our home page.

Note that the URL of your MovableType blog will have been sent to you in the email you received when the blog was created. In most cases it will have the form http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/j/jsmith/weblog/.

Whenever you're ready, click the link to Get Started!

Technorati solves this problem in two ways. First, it provides you a way of telling it that you have just posted a new entry to your blog. This is called "pinging" Technorati. Second, it reads the tags that you assign to your blog posts and uses those tags to return search results.

In this task, we'll look at some Technorati searches, learn how to ping Technorati so that our posts will show up quickly in a Technorati search, and learn how to tag our blog posts.

Over time, a blog that is written in an authentic voice instead of a made up personae holds the attention of the audience longer and serves the author better.

Start learning about blogs and blogging!

Learn about Tags and Folksonomies!

What if you could take images, videos, music, or articles and republish them—without having to ask permission first? If you find content marked with a Creative Commons License, you can. Developed by a nonprofit group of technologists and legal experts, Creative Commons licensing is a free and legal way for copyright holders to automatically grant certain permissions on their works.

Before Creative Commons, the options for openly licensing content were limited and difficult to use. Creative Commons marks an incredible shift from those days—one that especially benefits nonprofits and educational institutions.

Any organization or individual can publish just about any copyrighted content under a Creative Commons license, whether that content is a book, an audio file, a video clip, a font family, or any other creative work. Watch this short video to learn more about Creative Commons

Content that is published under a Creative Commons license bears a licensing label that usually appears with logos similar to the ones below. The logos are used to outline the terms of the license.

This example indicates that the copyright holder has decided to release the work under a Creative Commons license. Here's an example of a photograph published with a Creative Commons license.

It was marked:

This example indicates that the copyright holder has decided to release the work under a Creative Commons license. It's important to note that Creative Commons licensing does not mean that the copyright holder is giving up ownership of the work. Rather, the holder is saying that some permissions are granted up front and some rights are reserved. The "Some Rights Reserved" logo alludes to U.S. copyright law, which states that copyright holders automatically reserve all rights to their work (which is why you normally have to ask permission to make copies). Creative Commons licenses give copyright holders a legal way to say that they only want to reserve some rights. Looking for this logo on Web sites is a quick way to find material that is Creative Commons licensed.

The smaller logos list the specific conditions that you must follow if you decide to reuse the work. It's important to check these conditions, because they can vary from item to item.

In this particular case, "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike " means that you can make copies as long as you:

• Provide attribution to the creator and copyright holder on the reuse. In other words, you can't say that you created the image (or wrote the article or shot the video, etc.) or that you are now the copyright holder. You must clearly indicate on your reprint who originally created the work.
• Only use the work for noncommercial purposes. If, for example, you charge people to view your Web site or want to use material in a for-profit book, you'll have to ask for explicit permission.
• A derivative works is be allowed, as long as you "share alike," which means that you must republish your derivative work under the same type of Creative Commons license.

Some works that use Creative Commons licensing may have different conditions. For instance, commercial use may be permitted; or, you might not be allowed to modify (make "derivatives of ") the work. Using part of the work or revising some of it would require explicit permission.

If you're unsure of what conditions are required for a work you'd like to reuse, you can follow the linked logos in the licensing label to a page on the Creative Commons Web site and read the conditions in further detail.

Here are some sources you can use to find works published under a Creative Commons license:

• Flickr Creative Commons
• Creative Commons
• Wikimedia Commons
• Yahoo! Creative Commons search
• Google advanced search (filter results by license)

Tasks

1. Find a photograph that grants you rights to download the image and post it to your blog. Be sure to follow all the stipulations of the license.
2. Go to the Creative Commons Website and explore the "Audio, Video, Images, Text, Education, and Software" links listed in the right hand column of the home page.
3. If you're feeling creative, find a work that allows the creation of a derivative work and try your hand at remixing an image, or a video, or some music.

But there is another way. No, I didn't say a better way....for some it may be better but others may feel more comfortable with the older model for now. The new, Web 2.0, way is to move desktop applications and the files they produce to the web.

Advantages of this are pretty clear. You can access your files from any internet connected computer. Traveling to Europe for the summer? No problem....sit down at any internet cafe and instantly have access to all your email, photos and word processing files. Regularly have need to work on two or more different computers? No need to worry about keeping synced copies of all files on all machines, just access everything from the web. Need to share your files with others? Hey, that's what Web 2.0 is all about.

So if this is so wonderful, why aren't we all doing it? Well, for one thing some of these applications are pretty new still, and not as full featured as their desktop counterparts. You have no access to your files when you are not connected to the internet. And some people are still concerned about privacy issues and continued access to files when everything is stored on a third party site, especially one that is providing the service for free.

Google has been buying up many of the early entries in the online desktop application arena. This is either a good thing - one Google account gets you access to web-based email, calendaring, word processing, spreadsheets, photo management and more - or a bad thing, depending on your attitude towards Google. But given the range of applications Google offers, we are going to use it for this week's exercises.

Exercise 1: Create a Google account and explore some of the applications Google has online. Start at https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount and click Create an Account Now. Once you have your Google Account you'll be able to use Gmail, Google Documents and Spreadsheets, Calendar and more. Note: If you already created a Google account to use Google Reader or for any other Google service, you should be able to begin exploring other Google applications right away without the need to create a new account.

Exercise 2: Use Google Documents & Spreadsheets to share a word processing or spreadsheet file with a co-worker. See Google's Help page on Collaborating and Publishing for details on how to share your documents.

Exercise 3: Write a blog entry about using web-based desktop applications. Is this something you think you'll do more of now? Does this model work better for some applications than others? Is there a reason why you'd prefer to stay with the model where applications and files are stored on your computer?

• Virtual Salt
• UCLA's How-To Guide on Thinking Critically about WWW Resources

Compared with inconsistent web sites, databases contain uniformly reliable information. While web sites have lots of stuff that may be unfiltered, unedited or created by just about anybody, virtually all databases provide information that has been selected, edited and reviewed by experts. Most databases also allow techniques such as Boolean searching or truncation that usually generate more relevant results. Alleghenians presently have access to more than 100 databases:

• Pelletier Library Databases and Indexes

Task #1: Do a Google search on any topic of your choice.

Task #2 : Choose one relevant database and then search for the same topic.

Task #3: Create a blog post that compares and evaluates the results from both searches.

For this topic we are going to link to the PLCMC 23 Things blog. The first task below will take you to their site.

Task #1 Learn more about Wikis

Task #2 Watch this clip from the Colbert Report about Wikiality. You may also want to watch the clip on Wikilobbying while you're there.

Task #3 (optional) Find a page on Wikipedia covering a subject you are familiar with and edit the page to either correct misinformation or add new information.

Task #4 Write a blog post about your thoughts on wikis. Include a link to the Wikipedia entry you edited if you did Task 3.