Bubbl.us – another great Web 2.0 tool

Bubbl.us (available from http://bubbl.us) is a great example of a Web 2.0 that caters for the visual and logical learning styles. It allows users to create mind maps online, free of charge and as a real bonus, be able to share them with friends on their friend list. This is exactly what Web 2.0 is about – it is a website not just about text, but imagery, also allowing users to contribute a large amount and share these with other people.

The other (more time consuming way of sharing mind maps) way is to create a mind map in software such as Inspiration – which is not free, and not every student has at home, and then to email the map to many people. Bubbl.us saves all of this time, and can do as much as software such as Inspiration.

(Thanks to http://kayc28.wordpress.com/ blog for finding this great software and sharing it with everyone!)

More than just a little orange icon…

I started seeing this icon around on websites many months ago and wondered what exactly what it was. I knew it had the name of RSS, but I was not too sure what it did. The introduction of Internet Explorer 7.0 as well as upgrades to other popular browsers such as Mozilla Firefox have opened the door to RSS.

RSS is a real time saver, and I have barely started using it!

For those who do not quite know about it, RSS is a subscription to a website that is updated regularly. Instead of checking 100 websites each day to see if there are updates or new posts, RSS will let you know in seconds which have been updated and what the updates are. This would be effective in the classroom because it means if every student in a class has a blog, a teacher would not have to spend hours going through checking every blog for updates.

I mentioned web browsers and RSS just above, but until everyone has a laptop and wireless access every where, the problem is that your RSS updates do not follow you. iGoogle has solved this problem by creating an area for you to store all your subscriptions, and as usual with Google, it is free! That means no matter where you are, if you have a computer and internet access, you’ll have all your favourite website updates sent straight to you!

pbwiki

Signing up to pbwiki was quick and easy, and using it is fairly easy too. I do not see too many downsides to pbwiki. You can restrict access to who can post by having a password to add/edit pages; however, if you want to change the password for security reasons, you would have to tell everyone about the change. I think having user accounts would be a better approach to this.

I agree with this review (http://frem.wordpress.com/2006/02/04/pbwiki-review/, Accessed Sat 18 Aug 2007 at 9.10am AEST) in that only 10mb of space is nothing. As it says, email services are offering 25mb, and I have seen plenty of free web hosting services that offer at least 10 times what pbwiki offers. For a wiki, 10mb is far too small – especially if you have a number of contributers (which you should, to really make it a wiki!), and everyone is adding a lot of information, it all begins to really add up. There are upgrade options, but they all cost.

I think the idea of wikis are great – as I have said above it is about people adding their research and everyone helping out. It offers more than a static website run by one person could every offer; however, the one downside is that to go through and verify all of the information would take forever. If you only have people that you trust working on the wiki, then this would not be a problem.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is something I have been seeing around the Internet on many web pages for a while now. I just was not sure what it was, but I am glad I found it. The idea of creating public bookmarks is an excellent idea, or even just create them on del.icio.us so that you can access them anywhere and anytime.

It includes a toolbar for your web browser, which I have not installed (I am not a big fan of these ad-ons to programs like Internet Explorer). The sites are also available by just going to http://del.icio.us and if someone else provides you with their username, you can start viewing each other’s favourite websites.

I have created an account: http://del.icio.us/mashton2 although I will be adding more websites over time!

The addresses can be easily shared. Rather than copying every single one of your favourites into a blog, which will eventually be archived anyway, you can post the web address as I have done in the previous paragraph as part of your signature for example.

My experience of Facebook

After many months of my friends asking me to sign up to MySpace, I did recently. I enjoy using MySpace to communicate with friends online and post photos etc; but then Facebook’s popularity started rising. I thought I would sign up to Facebook as well, and have a look around and like MySpace, see what the ‘fuss’ is about!

 I think that Facebook has a nicer look than MySpace. No ads is a big plus, but also the layout and colours just seem nicer. Everyone’s profile looks pretty much the same on Facebook, and I am yet to find anyone posting heaps of videos on Facebook, like I have on MySpace (which is very slow loading).

I have found it harder to find friends on Facebook, but once you find a few, you find more of your friends on their friends list etc. The networking seems a bit better overall.

One thing that I do not like about Facebook is the primary way of finding friends. This involves giving your email address and email password to Facebook! It then searches through your address book and emails everyone with a friend request. I have not done this yet, and probably will not do it because I do not know exactly where my email password is going. I guess the way around it is to simply change your email password within minutes of giving it to Facebook, so that Facebook has temporary access.

Facebook does not have the features of MySpace? As mentioned on this site (http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19122/page1/, Accessed Sat 18 Aug 2007 at 8.40am AEST), web developers can make their own applications to be added to Facebook. I like how the site describes it as “a social operating system”! The idea of allowing these applications to be added really adds to the community contribution, sharing and truly makes Facebook in the Web 2.0 list.

WordPress

I found WordPress easy to sign up to and fairly easy to use. I think that blogs are a good resource to use on the internet – they are things that everyone can contribute to and access easily. Extra components such as RSS feeds and the easy search features make blogging great for anyone to read. WordPress, like most blog software, allows the poster store posts in different categories (as I have done). This is helpful in my blog for example, if you just wish to find out what I think about Web 2.0 tools.

On one review of WordPress (http://chronotron.wordpress.com/2006/01/14/wordpress-full-review/, Accessed Fri 17 Aug 2007 at 3.40pm AEST) the author in a review of WordPress mentions that layout and design of the site is not that impressive. I agree the design is not great; however, I disagree in that this is not a major issue when it comes to blogs. I think the content and media posted in each blog is far more important than the surrounding colours and borders etc. I guess though that this is a subjective opinion – some people are into colourful pages with fancy fonts, but I prefer to just explore the content when it comes to blogs.

Using Flickr

Creating a Flickr account was quite quick and easy, but requires a Yahoo! ID. I think this will save time for people who already have a Yahoo! ID; however, as I did not have one, I had to sign up.

After registering, I found uploading pictures was quite quick and a similar process to the MySpace photo upload – a process many school children would be familiar with! It just involved searching for the file(s) on my computer and then adding a few custom tags and descriptions.

I like the idea of other people being able to view each other’s pictures and being able to comment. The option to set images to ‘private’ is also a good idea. Flickr helps to make a much greater range of images available on the Internet, especially for categories that may not be as popular as others. It also means that people do not require skills in creating a website and then hoping Google Images or Yahoo! Images one day finds their pictures for other people to view.

My Flickr account with photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11069506@N02/