Immersion, Spring Semester -- Week 9

I'm having a love affair with this wiki

Okay, so that doesn't roll off the tongue like, "I'm having a love affair with this ice cream sandwich", but it portrays the same sentiment. I first tried using a wiki in my Intro to Instructional Design class. It was a self-imposed experiment so I could learn more about Web 2.0 tools. Since then, I have used wikis as deliverables for class assignments, and a wiki serves as an integral part of communication and information sharing for our Immersion team. We have even proposed using a variety of wikis as a part of the Virtual Collaboration Center (VCC). I built out the team's experimental dekiwiki to demonstrate the suggested 2 prong approach for participant information gathering in the training tools development area of the VCC. We showed this to the client, and he really took a shine to the idea, thinking that it would not only be a useful way to design the VCC, but if enough components were built out before the end of the semester, then the Assistive Technology Priority Project members could use these tools now rather than 2-3 years from now. I am also using a wiki for my Educational Research project. In my pilot study, the subjects (my family members ... so much for limiting bias, huh?), are testing out a wiki for the first time. I am getting excited phone calls from my mother as she familiarizes herself with the features and sees the potential of what a wiki can provide to its participants. I didn't realize I would be delivering the gospel of the wiki ...

Facebook and wikis and blogs, oh my!

So classes started on Monday. My first class -- Analysis and Design of Multimedia/Hypermedia Environments -- I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my instructor wants everyone to start a Facebook profile. She has also established a class wiki to share general information, class resources, and serve as a document repository for our group projects. She wants us to contribute a few times to a class blog. As you can see, we are exploring Web 2.0, and she is taking the approach of -- we can't talk about Web 2.0 unless we do Web 2.0. All I can do is thank Nan W. for pushing me to start a Facebook profile over the summer! I am also glad that I have worked with a wiki before and started this blog before classes began.

Web 2.0 is an interesting animal. Here are a few clips that try to get to the meat of the Web 2.0 idea.

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

A friend recently blogged about an interesting impact of the Web 2.0 culture. The creator of Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us, Professor Michael Wesch, recently lead a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University through a digital ethnography of YouTube. See their YouTube project site. I find the idea of digital ethnography fascinating and would love to explore the subject further.