Expertise between Face-to-Face and the Web

How do I judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from my notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

If the article I read on the web has valuable information that indicates that the person is an expert, I would value expertise on the web more than in face-to-face because the article would be open to critique and revision. However, some times I cannot tell from the appearance of the source whether it is trustworthy or not. For example, some readings we have in this course are personal blogs that I would not have trusted if I found them by myself just because they are not published in a journal. If I know that the person I read his/her work on the web is an expertise, I would definitely value his/her work even if it is a personal blog. But if I do not know the author, I would trust articles that have more interaction. 

Crowdsourcing and Making Money

After last week post about planets hunting, I was motivated to learn more about crowdsourcing and fortunately we just read an article about it this week written by Jeff Howe. I learned that the term "crowdsourcing" was first introduced to public from the article we just read in the Wired magazine (June, 2006). The article captured many examples of the development of crowdsourcing with great details, but I wanted to highlight its definition and provide a simpler example. 
The definition of crowdsourcing which was not clear in the article is, according to Merriam Webster, " the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers". Similar to what we read, It is all about gathering opinions, solutions, or suggestions from individuals who volunteer or work like contractors from outside the organization. Facebook or other social media sites could be used to gather feedback or opinions from crowds. 

On Howe article we read about Amazon Mechanical Turk as an example of crowdsourcing marketplace. So, I checked it out and found that this kind of contracting with businesses could bring good opportunities to individuals, but yet the low payment that may not exceed one dollar per hour won't allow one to make money of it. Do you want to give it a try?

schoology

When I visited the showroom during FETC in Orlando in 2013, I found a quite elegant stand at the center of the showroom for a company called Schoology which I have not heard of before. I set to listen to their presentation and teachers' questions and comments.  I found most teachers were interested in Google, Edmodo and schoology so I planned to give it a try. I signed up into two accounts, one as a teacher and one as a student to see how both ends see the same class. For me, it is a great tool to be free but it is not different  than Edmodo or many other LMSs and their communities have not been developed as much as the communities in Edmodo. Therefore, it will stay in mind for a couple of years before I decide to use it or not.

I found

My Best Finds: Edcanvas More than Just a Presentation

When I was looking for a platform to host one of my produsages, I found Edcanvas to be a competitive platform. It has a very easy interface that teachers may want to use to engage students in producing content by accumulating media and texts from different resources. Also, teachers are able to add quizzes and track each student within the teachers free access. Edcanvas charges schools for optional features like making voice comments and adding collaborative documents which could be a worthwhile for teachers who need a learning management system that is easy and bring many features on one platform. I personally recommend it for school teachers. Do you?

My best finds: help NASA in planets hunting!

When I was looking for resources for my first produsage about space and looking for communities and web 2.0 tools, I came across a website Planet Hunting that was cool and different than everything I have ever seen! 

While NASA is doing great in web 1.0, their communities seem to be for either kids or professionals. However, Planet Hunting asks for help from anybody to assist scientists to analyze large data sets of faraway stars using data from NASA. It is all about utilizing human's eyes ability to identify patterns of bright spots of stars that is more precise than computers algorithms! In addition to contributing to the research,  individuals like me have profiles of stars or planets they have discovered and are able to engage in an active community in the same way we do with other social network sites.  
Although you may not be interested in hunting planets, I wanted to share this with you to see how clever it was to apply the philosophy of Web 2.0 in collecting data for research. According to Dr. Dennen, this phenomenon is called "crowdsourcing".

How come little kids know about online liking!

Hello, I would like to start blogging this week by telling you about an interesting conversation I had with my 6-years-old daughter.  Yesterday, my other daughter (4 years old) and she opened their Lalaloopsy coffee shop in their room and invited me to be their first costumer. Since I liked their creativity I said "wow, I think even moms enjoyed your coffee shop". She immediately answered me "please costumer go online and like our shop, please give us a big cup cake". LOL.. Actually, I could not stop laughing because I was thinking how come a kid who has never seen Facebook or other social networks became aware of the importance of "liking" to their business!!  Now, I remember one day she was beside me and saw me clicking on a cupcake button so she asked me why I did that and I answered "because I like it"!
Do you think social networking, liking, and other trends would last longer and seriously change the way the new generation communicate with us?

Do you like to design a lesson inside a video?

I do like to try the new iPad app TouChcast when I receive my iPad. Maybe there are other interactive video applications but I feel that something is different about this app. It brings everything you want to do inside the screen instead of waiting to finish the video or pausing it to be able to take notes, or checking Tweeter! Watch this video to learn more about it then let me know what do you think.

Collaboration in Wikis and Blogs

What are Wikis and blogs? 
Wikis are web pages that allow groups of users to work collaboratively in creating and editing content. Blogs are usually personal websites where authors write posts frequently about their experience to share with others who can comment. Blogs allow for discussions between the author and readers. 
How do they support learning?
In education, many teachers have been using wikis and blogs for their students to work individually or in groups because of several reasons. First, they are free of charge and easy to build and maintain. Second, they allow for collaborative work and discussions. Third, they give learners more space to write with a sense of ownership that may motivate them to learn more. Fourth, in blogs and Wikis, teachers and students are able to add materials, media, RSS feeds, news, social media, and many applications.Teachers also can use blogs to enhance their professional development and learn in communities of practice.

Personally, I prefer discussions in blogs more than in threaded discussions because blogs allow the reader to see all comments on one page instead of going back an fourth in threaded discussions like Blackboard’s discussion board that I used to participate in for my online classes. Reading discussions in Blackboard is time consuming and to avoid that I used to collect all posts of a thread in one page to be able to read posts faster. 

Any challenges?
This blog is my first experience in blogging but I can see its potential as a former teacher and instructional designer. As a student in graduate courses, I have used Wikispace in one class to build a collaborative glossary of educational terminologies and that collaborative work was more organized than I thought it would be. All classmates were assigned to write definitions of words of their choice which is less complicated than other possible written assignments. Wikis and blogs are the technology and teachers or instructional designers have to ensure that students understand how to use them to work within groups. Wikis for example make tracking easier by offering the history feature that enable users to detect new changes, who made them, and when. One more thing I like about blogging in Google Blogger is that it is free of ads unlike Wordpress.com.

Does my experience different than yours?

Am I a produser or a consumer?

The prompt: How might the concept of produsage be applied in your life (personal and/or professional) as it stands today? Are you already a produser? If yes, what do you do? If no, why not? 

My response: Mainly, I am a consumer of social media and web 2.0 tools. I do not watch TV though I have one because I like the new media younger people are producing on Youtube. I do not produce videos because this is not what I want to do or used to do, but I have might done some if these tools had appeared when I was still a teacher. I used to create PowerPoint slides since social media have not been popular in education at that time. These days, all production I do is related to assignments in graduate school. As a student, I find many resources out there in the web that make my contribution to produce content might not meet a great need giving the time it takes and the limited time I have. The only thing I think I can do is to help communicate and spread knowledge by liking, sharing, and retweeting articles in social networks.