DummiesDelight
From LearnSpace
| Table of contents |
Intro
Use this Wiki Page to create a group review/tutorial of what we have covered in the last 3-4 weeks!
Hint create 'sections' in the wiki page for each person to edit, so that you can each work on a different section (I've created some sections as an idea below). A new section is automatically created when you create a heading in MediaWiki. - to create a heading, place the heading title inside double equals signs, e.g. == Heading ==
Also try linking to pictures from your Flickr account - simply log into Flickr, right click on an image, copy its link, then paste the link into Mediawiki. e.g. http://static.flickr.com/14/18268266_0a91c0f0cd_t.jpg will produce the following pic
THIS WIKISPACE EXPLAINS THE VARIOUS TOOLS WE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT. WE ALSO HAVE ANOTHER WIKISPACE WHERE WE TRACE OUR PATHWAY TO DELIGHT - GO TO > http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/mediawiki/index.php/DummiesPathway
BlackBoard
Blackboard was the tool we used to start our journey on the first day. We set up a homepage that covered some personal details and then we added photos using a digtail camera. I was really excited about doing this thinking wow but before we could turn around we set off making Blogs. However, Blackboard has been really valuable for us because Thomas has an outline of the course on it and when we have got lost there has been a weekly outline of what we have covered.
Blogs
Blogs are a cyberplace to post a personal profile and journal. You can paint a picture about yourself and choose to share it with a group of people. We are also using our blogs to record our learning experiences as we progress through the weeks. Then the idae is to have an RSS feed on our blogs so we know when we update them without having to go to each one individually!
Flickr
Flickr is a great system. It provides a platform to post photos to in cyberspace, which you can give your friends access to. I guess it like a personal online photo album. You can sort your photos into batches, and look at amazing photography taken my other people, by searching for keywords. I have searched 'trees' and found some amazing images.
For example, I can show you the photos I took at Hamilton Gardens last month, or link with my sister-in-law in the UK, so she see photos of my last weekend holiday.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging (IM) is just as it sounds. It allows two or more people to communicate in real time in either private or group spaces.
So we can talk one on one 
or we can unfurl a whole new conversation with a group of us.
We each created an account using MSN. The link to do this is http://messenger.msn.com/download
Once this was done we were all able to connect to each other and chat either in pairs or collectively. Multiple partners!
Why IM?
The beauty of IM is the immediacy of it. You talk in real time and so the conversation flows without having to wait for emails to go back and forward and it also allows for collective conversations. I can see that it can be addictive if you don't watch out. I think we should agree to have a day when we all leave it on at work and have some brief chats throughout the day about how things are going in D2D.
It feels like we are climbing technological mountains as we work our way through these new ways of communicating.
RSS
RSS is great. It stands for Rich Site Summary which doesn't really explain it at all. So here's a simple explanation.
The purpose is to have a means of keeping up with new posts at all the sites we are interested in without having to log on to each one individually. To do this each of us has created an account at Newsgator through which we subscribe to all the various sites we want. Some of these are our own Blogs and Flickr accounts. This means we can cross to read new postings and even write a response. Then back to Newsgator for the next new posting to check out.
In addition we can go to almost any site that provides regular updates (eg: BBC World News) click on the RSS icon and paste it into our Newsgator account. Newsgator then shows whenever there are new postings to read.
It's excellent. It could get quite busy if we have loads of websites to which we subscribe, but I guess it's easy enough to do a skim and delete any new postings we don't want to read.
I think that being introduced to RSS stuff after having done Blackboard, Blogs and Flickr is a good idea because you start to get the feeling that it's all getting too vast, and then aloing comes RSS to make it all manageable.
RSS makes life a beach
