hypermedia studies

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I’ve been looking forward to attend this event since the topic is closely related to my module this term. I want to see if the VIP speakers can bring us any good ideas on the links or connections between Web 2.0 and education.

Here is the intro about the event forwarded from DANA Centre website:

How will the likes of MySpace, Wikipedia and Skype change the way we live, have fun and do business? Is it really a whole new edition of the World Wide Web or just marketing hype? Talk about the future with experts.

Speakers:
George Hadjigeorgiou, general manager, communications and community projects, Yahoo Europe
Aleks Krotoski, technology columnist, The Guardian; researcher, University of Surrey
Tim Malbon, creative director, Interesource
Alison Wheeler, CEO of Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Foundation

Facilatator:
Gareth Mitchell, BBC World service ‘Digital Planet’ presenter

As part of the event why not try out some Web 2.0 websites:

See you there:)

Dear friends,

This is our message board for the mini course ‘Learn Chinese’.

Just drop your questions or comments any time you want.

Learn Chinese – link you and me!

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us 

Web 2.0

I’d like to share with you an article I read today from reuters.com titled ‘Kids socialize in a virtual world as avatars‘. It introduced four SNS sites for Kids, “Stardoll, Doppelganger, Club Penguin and Gaia Online”. These SNS sites are quite similar to Second Life where users live in a virtual world as different roles. The reasons why the sites are popular are these are the places for them to ‘be yourself’ and without ‘having pages where they feel forced to look sexy or cool or write some outrageous stuff in order to stand out.’

In my opinion, these sites are set up for sole purpose of entertainment instead of education. Or we can say, they are bulit up opposite to school settings.

Generally ‘tandem learning’  refers to ‘tandem language learning’. I found the definition of ‘tandem learning’ on wikipedia.

“Tandem language learning is a method of language learning based on mutual language exchange between tandem partners (ideally each learner is a native speaker in the language the proponent wants to learn). Many language schools in the world, organised as TANDEM International, as well as many universities, are working with this method.”

I also found the site about eTandem through searching: http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/etandem/etdef-en.html

It’s really a good idea to learn a foreign language and it’s free.

Gmail

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　　Blogger

　　last.fm

　　Tabblo

YouTube

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Just now when I clicked to ‘Publish’ the last article it reported error. When I checked the backend, I  didn’t find the article I just wrote. Terrible! But fortunately I had copied the article before I ‘Published’ it.

I suggest you copy your article esp. for long article before publish it in case something displeasing may occur.

The article ‘Why we blog‘ explored the motivations of the bloggers based on in-depth interviews.

It listed “five major motivations for blogging: documenting one’s life; providing commentary and opinions; expressing deeply felt emotions; articulating ideas through writing; and forming and maintaining community forums.” The authors also pointed out “[t]hese motivations are by no means mutually exclusive and might come into play simultaneously.“

I basically agree with the authors’ arguments on blogging. It has to be noted that the research was based on blogging before 2004 when blogging was developped at a lower level comparatively. As the authors argued, “Blogs can be characterized as having limited interactivity” (p. 46). Nowadays the Blog 2.0 can provided very interactive functions, you may refer to my introduction to a Chinese blog site here: http://hypermedia.edublogs.org/2007/05/28/thoughts-on-are-you-connected/

My self-reflexive post on my blogging experience so far:

>Why would you continue to blog in the future?

I’d like to share with people similar interests esp. on the use of Web 2.0 in education here.

>According to Nardi et al. (2004) bloggers are driven to document their lives, provide commentary and opinions, express deeply felt emotions, articulate ideas through writing, or form and maintain community forums. Other than being forced to so for this course, why would you carry on to blog in your ‘real’ lives? Conversely, what reasons would you give for *not* carrying on with a blog?

For my Chinese blog which was set up in 2004, I’ve been using it just for my personal place online where I exchange my emotions and ideas with a group of people who value my materials.

>Who would you blog for?

 I blog for the audience with similar interests and opinions. I don’t expect a big audience but look forward to some echoes.  

>Are you blogging mainly for your own benefit or the benefit of others? What sense of audience have you got when you are blogging? What evidence have you got for your blog being used by others?

I blog both for my own benefit and the benefit of others. For my Chinese blog, I use it to record my life experience and share my emotions, in addition, since I’m a technology fanatic, I think I can help people slove some technical problems. So I also write down how I slove some teachnical problems and would like to slove their problem if asked to. Thus other people can be benefitted. For this blog, I want to share with people ideas and developments on the use of Web 2.0 in education. It’ll benefit both the audience and me.

>What are the benefits of blogging for (i) yourself and (ii) others?

First of all, I’d like to thank Sharna for sharing the Facebook article on londonpaper.

Here are two more SNS site introdued on londonpaper:

1. www.asmallworld.net

It’s said to be ‘the real posh set’. You cannot get in untill you get an invitation.

2. www.lifecake.com

This is an innovative one to be launched next month. The biggest difference is that ‘it uses video-technology so members can put up their work for discussion. It’s called ’social exchange rather than social networking’. It’s interesting to konw the implication of ’social exchange’.