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. 

5 Differences Between Social Media and Social Networking

Social media and social networking do have some overlap, but they really aren't the same thing. Sarah Hartshorn  discussed the differences between the two concepts in a way that makes the difference clear. For easier reading, I organized its article in the table below. 

	Social Media	Social Networks
Purpose	Social media is a way to transmit, or share information with a broad audience. Everyone has the opportunity to create and distribute. All you really need is an internet connection and you're off to the races.	Social networking is an act of engagement. Groups of people with common interests, or like-minds, associate together on social networking sites and build relationships through community.
Communication Style	Social media is more akin to a communication channel. It's a format that delivers a message. Like television, radio or newspaper, social media isn't a location that you visit. Social media is simply a system that disseminates information ‘to' others.	With social networking, communication is two-way. Depending on the topic, subject matter or atmosphere, people congregate to join others with similar experiences and backgrounds. Conversations are at the core of social networking and through them relationships are developed.
Return to investment	It can be difficult to obtain precise numbers for determining the ROI from social media. How do you put a numeric value on the buzz and excitement of online conversations about your brand, product or service? This doesn't mean that ROI is null, it just means that the tactics used to measure are different. For instance, influence, or the depth of conversation and what the conversations are about, can be used to gauge ROI.	Social networking's ROI is a bit more obvious. If the overall traffic to your website is on the rise and you're diligently increasing your social networking base, you probably could attribute the rise in online visitors to your social efforts.
Timely Response	Social media is hard work and it takes time. You can't automate individual conversations and unless you're a well-known and established brand, building a following doesn't happen overnight. Social media is definitely a marathon and not a sprint.	Because social networking is direct communication between you and the people that you choose connect with, your conversations are richer, more purposeful and more personal. Your network exponentially grows as you meet and get introduced to others.
Asking or Telling	A big no-no on with social media is skewing or manipulating comments, likes, diggs, stumbles or other data, for your own benefit (personal or business). Asking friends, family, co-workers or anyone else to cast a vote just to cast it, doesn't do anyone much good for anyone and it can quickly become a PR nightmare if word leaks out about dishonest practices.	With social networking, you can tell your peers about your new business or blog and discuss how to make it a success. The conversations that you create can convert many people into loyal fans, so it's worth investing the time.

Source: http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/194754

Pew Internet: Social Networking (full detail)

According to Pew Internet, 67% of online adults use social networking sites, as of December 2012.

http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-detail.aspx

CMS vs. Web 2.0 vs. Social Media – Do You Know the Difference?

To know the difference take a look at this
http://engagedlearning.net/post/cms-vs-web-2-0-vs-social-media-do-you-know-the-difference/