Assignment 4, Social software and Web 2.00 – Digital Storytelling

The basic principles of digital storytelling

Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digi­tal content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. (7 things you should know about storytelling)

Nowadays stories can be interactive movies that might include highly produced audio and visual effects. At the same time, a set of slides with related nar­ration or music can compose a simple digital story.

The resources available to making a digital story are unlimited, giving the storyteller huge creative latitude. Some learning theorists believe that storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. Creating a narra­tive and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective(Franz and Nischelwitzer, 2004).

Story idea

Idea for this story comes from one of Jalal al-Din Rumi’s stories. Rumi was a 13^th century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rūmī is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rūm (then under the control of Seljuq dynasty) because it was once ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire.

The story is about three fishes that lived in a lake and the approaches each of them used to survive from fishermen and their nets.

Media used

·         Photoshop or any other photo editing software for editing scanned photos

·         Windows movie maker V2.6 for making the video

·         Youtube.com for uploading video created

You can find lots of useful Medias to create your own story here.

Production phase/ overview of pros and cons / chosen age group

At first phase I tried to find a proper story to tell and I thought the famous stories from old literature’s books would be good choice so I referred to Rumi’s stories which are my favorite.

At second step I modified the story to make it brief and good enough for a 2-5 minutes storytelling project. After designing the storyboard, I started to draw pictures. For this step, at first I drawn pictures on the paper then using scanner converted all of them to .jpg format. I have used Photo editing software( Adobe premier CS5) for editing and coloring the pictures.

I used an mp3 recorder to make the vocal narration. For mixing the voice whit picture Scenes I tried Adobe premier CS5.

I personally think the story I told, could be good for the age group 5-10 years old children which will learn what is the power of thinking and why we need to use our brain to survive.

Final work

This is my story!

 

You can see my final digital story directly on Youtube.com at this address.

 

 

Reference

FRANZ, K. & NISCHELWITZER, A. K. Year. Adaptive Digital Storytelling: A Concept for Narrative Structures and Digital Storytelling build on Basic Storytelling Principles, Adaptive Story Schemas and Structure Mapping Techniques. In, 2004. 25.

 

 

Assignment 2c, Social software and Web 2.00 – Study a Social Network

2c. Post study reflection

Watch a couple of presentations published in the forum and make a concluding post in your blog and address:

• Similarities and differences between networks
• In what way has your view upon social changed?

***

Similarities and differences between networks 

Base on what I saw at forum linked to assignment 2, As yet just 4 of my classmates have done this assignment so I’m going to read their assignments and make a concluding about similarities, differences and changes social networks have experienced since first day.

My classmates have worked on three different social networks as facebook.com, goodreads.com and academia.edu. The nature and nomenclature of these websites may vary from site to site but they have the same concept which is Social networking. All of these networks try to provide a good environment to:

1. Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system.
2. Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection.
3. View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

A discussion with your view upon how social networks has grown and changed

Given the rapid growth and popularity of social networks in the coming years, it doesn't appear that the concept is going to go away. The evolution of the Internet is now forming itself around the characteristics of social networks. Bloggers and website developers are using tools like RSS feeds, Digg or Technorati to communicate and interact with other bloggers. Through blog comments and tagging, websites and blogs are also integrating into what experts now call Web 2.0. The entire Internet itself is fast becoming a giant, interactive and powerful social network (Mason and Rennie, 2008).

Over the course of the last 3 years, Stelzner has seen social media move from an uncertain strategy (2009 report) to a permanent fixture (2010 report) to a primary tool (2011 report) in the savvy marketer’s toolkit.

References

MASON, R. & RENNIE, F. 2008. E-learning and social networking handbook: resources for higher education, Psychology Press.

Assignment 1a-1b, SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND WEB 2.00

1b-How micro-blogs can be used in education and teaching?

During last ten years, Web 2.0 has turned into an amazing success story. These days World Wide Web is driven by user generated content, the use of weblogs, wikis, micro blogs and podcasts has increased dramatically. Social media, social networks and social communities all represent a new form of collaboration and communication. In a short space of time, the World Wide Web has been transformed from a static information medium into a worldwide communication platform.(Brown, 2008)

Web 2.0 technologies are also of great interest, given that the use of the internet for educational purposes, known as e-learning or Technology Enhanced Learning, is a very important future stakeholder for education. Stephen Downes (2005) introduced a new term, ‘‘e-Learning 2.0”, and thus coined a name for the use of wikis, weblogs and podcasts in educational settings. Since then, much research work has been done and many publications (Augar, Raitman, & Zhou, 2005; Caddick, 2006; Evans, 2007; Towned, 2005; Raitman, Augar, & Zhou, 2005; Ebner, 2007) and scientific reports have pointed out how these new technological possibilities can be used in the context of our social environments. Collaboration and communication by means of weblogs and wikis enhance traditional education in a new and exciting way.

In recent years there have been mainly two reasons for the increasing attention given to process-oriented approaches in didactics. The first can be traced back to the development of a constructivist approach to learning. In this context the process of knowledge construction, the person’s own learning process, leads to the application of process-oriented learning. As a result, more attention is given to the matter of the learner’s own attitude as well as the opinions of others.

From this perspective, learning processes cannot be tightly structured and the results of learning are almost unpredictable. In addition, the relevance of process knowledge is increasing as the time factor plays a less important role. Process orientation does not refer to a tight structuring of the learning process, but rather to the possibility of trying out a range of learning strategies and reflecting on these.(Ebner et al., 2010)

Against this background the role of the teacher changes from that of a knowledge distributor to a facilitator of self-directed learning.

Therefore the instructional design (and the use of media) should concentrate on facilitating the learning process. This can be ensured primarily by creating favourable learning conditions (Kyndt, Dochy, & Nijs, 2009). With regard to communication, a basic openness is needed and the possibility to contribute one’s opinions and discuss different views. Micro blogging can foster process-oriented learning. The advantage of micro blogging consists mainly in the possibility of giving immediate feedback, as well as in the documentation of processes. The latter feature is relevant in two different ways: firstly, learning contributions can be consulted to obtain a summative account of learning activities and learning progress, and secondly, micro blogging offers the possibility to monitor learning processes and to respond to peer activity during the process (information awareness). However, certain disadvantages are evident. The same aspects that can be evaluated positively can be evaluated negatively(Ebner et al., 2010). For example, the limitation of 140 characters forces the learner to focus on the topic, but does not allow him or her to express complex thoughts. In addition, the possibility for private conversation may serve to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning or it may invite the learner to focus only on private exchange and/or to miss the separation between educational/ vocational and private use. In its favor, micro blogging can foster media literacy.(Cook, 2008)

References

BROWN, G. 2008. Social Media 100 Success Secrets: Social Media, Web 2.0 User-Generated Content and Virtual Communities-100 Most Asked Mass Collaboration Questions, Lulu. com.

COOK, N. 2008. Enterprise 2.0: how social software will change the future of work, Ashgate Pub Co.

EBNER, M., LIENHARDT, C., ROHS, M. & MEYER, I. 2010. Microblogs in Higher Education-A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning? Computers & Education, 55, 92-100.

***

1b- Describe at least 15 terms from the list provided.

1-badge

An image that displayed on a blog or personal profile on social media Web sites that identifies you. Most encourage readers and followers to download display their badge on your own site or blog and link back. Badges are considered a Web 2.0 trend and are also frequently used to display a "beta" message on your site or blog. 

Reference

2-TrackBack

TrackBack is a type of peer-to-peer communication system that was designed to send notification of updates between two Web sites via a Trackback Ping. Ping in reference to TrackBack refers to a small message sent from one Web server to another. TrackBacks are useful for informing a Web site that you have referenced its Web site within your own Web site, and is popular with bloggers.

TrackBack was first released as an open specification in August 2002. 

Reference

3-Microblog

A type of blog that lets users to publish short text updates. Bloggers can usually use a number of service for the updates including instant messaging, e-mail, or Twitter. The posts are called microposts, while the act of using these services to update your blog is called microblogging.  Social networking sites, like Facebook, also use a microblogging feature in profiles. On Facebook this is called "Status Updates".

Reference

4-Ajax

Short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it is a term that describes a new approach to using a number of existing technologies together, including the following: HTML or XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, the Document Object Model, XML, XSLT, and the XMLHttpRequest object. When these technologies are combined in the Ajax model, Web applications are able to make quick, incremental updates to the user interface without reloading the entire browser page.

[Source: mozilla developer center]

5-Direct Web Remoting (DWR)

Direct Web Remoting (DWR) is a Java open source library for those wanting to develop Web sites which contain Ajax. DWR enables the Javascript in a browser to interact with Java on a server, just as if it were in the browser. DWR encompasses two main components; a Java Servlet running on the server that processes requests and sends responses back to the browser, and JavaScript running in the browser that sends requests and can dynamically update the Web page. DWR development is sponsored by TIBCO.

Reference

6-Blogroll

Found on blogs it is a list of links to other blogs and Web sites that the blog author commonly references or is affiliated with. Blogrolls help blog authors to establish and build upon a their blogger community. In Web 1.0 terminology, a blogroll would be the equivalent of a list of hyperlinks on a personal Web page.

Reference

7-Blogosphere

Meaning all blogs, it is an expression used to describe the 'world of blogs'.

Reference

8-RSS

RSS is the acronym used to describe the de facto standard for the syndication of Web content. RSS is an XML-based format and while it can be used in different ways for content distribution, its most widespread usage is in distributing news headlines on the Web. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content can include data such as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.

Because there are different versions of RSS, the term RSS is most frequently used as a name to mean the syndication of Web content, rather than as an acronym for its founding technology. When using the name RSS the speaker may be referring to any of the following versions of Web content syndication:

• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

When using the term RSS, most will use it in reference to Rich Site Summary or the previous version called RDF Site Summary. When referring to Really Simple Syndication, it will usually be called RSS 2.0, not RSS.  There are several versions of RSS available, with the most commonly implemented version being RSS 0.91.  The most current version, however, is RSS 2.0 and it is backward-compatible with RSS 0.91. RSS was originally developed by Netscape. The RSS 2.0 specification was authored by Dave Winer.

Compare with Atom, an alternative open source XML-based Web content and metadata syndication format.

Reference

9-Bookmarklet

It is a direct link to a specific function or feature within a Web page. While a browser bookmark takes you to a specific page, the bookmarklet will take you to a function, such as a specific search (including the search phrase) on a Web page, a tagged location on Google maps and others. Bookmarklets are possible due to browser support of the protocol "javascript:" that lets you execute bits of JavaScript code directly.

Reference

10-Creative Commons license

A licensing concept created by Creative Commons that builds upon traditional copyright practices to define possibilities that exist between the standard "all rights reserved" full copyright and public domain "no rights reserved".  A Creative Commons license lets you dictate how others may use your work. The Creative Commons license allows you to keep your copyright but allows others to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit and only on the conditions you specify.  For online work you can select a license that generates "Some Rights Reserved" or a "No Rights Reserved" button and statement for your published work.

Reference

11-Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users. Other improved functionality of Web 2.0 includes open communication with an emphasis on Web-based communities of users, and more open sharing of information. Over time Web 2.0 has been used more as a marketing term than a computer-science-based term. Blogs, wikis, and Web services are all seen as components of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 was previously used as a synonym for Semantic Web, but while the two are similar, they do not share precisely the same meaning.

Reference

12-Voice 2.0

A buzzword used to describe the trends, technologies and applications used to bring IP telephony to the Web to create a new class of voice-enabled applications. Applications such as Skype is an example of Voice 2.0.

Reference

13-Web 3.0

The term used to describe the evolution of the Web as an extension of Web 2.0. This definition of Web 3.0 is the popular view held by Tim O'Reilly. In contrast, Nova Spivack defines Web 3.0 as connective intelligence; connecting data, concepts, applications and ultimately people. While some call the The Semantic Web 'Web 3.0', Spivack's opinion is that The Semantic Web is just one of several converging technologies and trends that will define Web 3.0.

Reference

14-Mash-up

The term mash-up refers to a new breed of Web-based applications created by hackers and programmers (typically on a volunteer basis) to mix at least two different services from disparate, and even competing, Web sites. A mash-up, for example, could overlay traffic data from one source on the Internet over maps from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google or any content provider. The term mash-up comes from the hip-hop music practice of mixing two or more songs.

This capability to mix and match data and applications from multiple sources into one dynamic entity is considered by many to represent the promise of the Web service standard (also referred to as on-demand computing).

Reference

15-OpenID

It is a shared identity service that enables users of multiple OpenID-enabled Web sites to sign in under one single profile, or single user identity. It's a free and open standard under which users are able to control the amount of personal information they provide on Web sites, and in particular social networking sites (SNS). To use OpenID across multiple sites, users must first choose an Open ID provider. Once you create an OpenID it stays with you, even if you choose at a later time to switch to a different OpenID provider.

OpenID works by using existing Internet technologies such as URI, HTTP, SSL and Diffie-Hellman to transform the information you provide on one site (or service) into an account that can be used at other sites that support OpenID logins. Some of the online and Internet services supporting OpenID include AOL, Blogger, Flickr, LiveDoor, LiveJopiurnal, Vox, Yahoo, WordPress, and others.

Reference

ASSIGNMENT 3e-SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND WEB 2.00

3e - Online presentations

Your task is to make a presentation of the applications you have chosen to work with in parts 3a-d. You could do this by using the Presentation tool in your chosen online office suite. Another way is to create your slides locally and use a slide sharing service for presentation.

You can use Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net), Scribd (http://www.scribd.com) or any other service you have discovered.
Your presentation should contain a short tutorial to each application (parts 3a-d). That is, after watching your presentation, the viewer should be able to know how to get started with all four applications.

Pick a target audience and adapt your presentation for your particular audience. Introduce each application in picture and text and describe the key concepts and the basic terminology that the user may encounter. You should also address pros and cons of each site. By watching your presentation, the user should understand why and how the sites can be used.

***

You can see the presentation related to assignment 3e at this URL:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57504457/Assignment-3e-Social-software-and-Web-2-00

ASSIGNMENT 3a-SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND WEB 2.00

3a - Online office suites

The most known online office suite is probably Google Docs, but there are more available. Find a few of these and try to figure out how they stand out in the competition.

Think of a context (school use, higher education, corporate use etc) where you think the application suite could be helpful and make up a list of evaluative criteria (requirements for your purpose) and compare two or more online office suites. Based on your evaluation, pick an online office suite to use for the rest of the assignment.

Use the chosen application suite to create a brief report in which you describe the evaluation process (context, evaluation results, and conclusions). Make sure to utilize some of the basic functionality. The report should contain text, tables and images (e. g. screenshots of the application).

***

Online office suites

An online office suite is a type of office suite offered by websites in the form of software as a service. They can be accessed online from any Internet enabled device running any operating system. This allows people to work together worldwide and at any time, thereby leading to international web-based collaboration and virtual teamwork. Usually, the basic versions are offered for free and for more advanced versions one is required to pay a nominal subscription fee.(Gillett et al.)

 

Applications for online office suites are often developed on the Web 2.0 platform with different levels. The term Office 2.0, which is usually used to refer to online office suites, originated with Ismael Ghalimi in an experimental effort to test whether he could perform his entire computer based work in online applications(Ghalimi and CEO, 2007).

The online office suites could be helpful in some ways as below (Skoczen and Bussmann, 2006):

• ·         The cost is low. Most of the time there is no specific charge for using the service for online users
• ·         There is no need to download or install software outside of the office suite's web page
• ·         They usually can be run with minimum hardware requirements
• ·         Users share a document without the need to run their own server.
• ·         No need to upgrade online software
• ·         They are portable. Documents are accessible from approximately any computer with a connection to the Internet
• ·         Users’ documents are stored on the remote server.

As first step for this assignment I try to list some important online office suites and sort them by functionality.

Open source suites

•  OpenOffice.org. Its components include Writer, Impress, Math, Draw, Calc, and Base. Releases are available for MS Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris. Since Sun was purchased by Oracle, OpenOffice.org is now under Oracle's ownership.
• Calligra Suite free and open-source office suite.
•  GNOME Office 
• LibreOffice: independent fork of OpenOffice.org with a number of enhancements

OpenOffice.org vs. GNOME Office

OpenOffice.org

Introduction

How does OpenOffice.org introduce itself?

“OpenOffice.org is both a product and an open-source project. Both have been in existence since October 13th, 2000. OpenOffice.org 1.0, the product, was released on April 30th, 2002. (about.openoffice.org)

OpenOffice.org's mission statement was drafted by the community:

To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Oracle, which is the primary contributor of code to the project. Our other corporate contributors include RedFlag CH2000 (RedOffice.com), and IBM, to name but two. Additionally over 500,000 people--unaffiliated individuals, business and government employees, and students from nearly every curve of the globe--have joined the project with the aim of creating the best possible office suite that all can use. Their work as a community is both invaluable and practical: people use what the community does. This is the essence of an open source community.”(about.openoffice.org)

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo , is an open source office suite which main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, graphics , presentations and databases.

OpenOffice.org is available for different operating systems like windows, Mac, safari etc, is published as free software and is written using its own GUI (graphical user interface) toolkit.

Features

Multilanguage service

OpenOffice.org 3 is available in more than 100 different languages (help, openoffice.org), working on all common computers, and storing data in an international open standard format.

Compatibility with different format

OpenOffice.org is able to read and write files from other common office software packages, as well as being available for download and use completely free for any purpose.(IRIMESCU, 2008)

In particular, the publishers of the office suite stress that it is the result of over twenty years' software engineering, it is easy to use, and it is free, released under the LGPL license. (wikipedia)

 

Components

OpenOffice.org comprises a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features commonly included in modern office suites. Many of the components mirror those available in Microsoft Office. The components available include:

Module	Notes
Writer	Similar to MS Word
Calc	Similar to MS Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
Impress	Similar to MS PowerPoint and Apple Keynote
Math	Similar to MS Equation Editor
Base	Similar to Microsoft Access
Draw	Similar to Scribus and MS Publisher. It can also export its creations to the PDF format

Socialization

Beside all routine services as an office suite, this website tries to be like a social network. Since there are more than 400,000 registered members on openoffice.org, the system has provided networking and blogging facilities for its users. Every registered user has a profile and can search through other users’ profiles to find related topics and publications and projects memberships. Users also can search all tags belonged to all posts.

Extensions

OpenOffice.org supports extensions, something like Mozilla Firefox, including the exclusive extension .oxt. Extensions usually are used to add new functionality to an on hand OpenOffice.org installation. There are more than 390 extensions for recent versions. Since OpenOffice.org is open source software, developers can simply build new extensions for it.

GNOME Office

Introduction

GNOME Office is a free office suite for the GNOME desktop.

How does GNOME introduce itself?

The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two then university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, it is the most popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. The desktop has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized in a large number of popular mobile devices.(about us/ GNOME.org)

Features

Compatibility with different format

OpenOffice.org is able to read and write files from other common office software packages, as well as being available for download and use completely free for any purpose.(IRIMESCU, 2008)

Socialization and interface

Level of socialization in GNOME office is less than other famous projects like Open Office.org since you only sign in to be a user of the system and have a simple profile. Then you only can subscribe other users to find out what they have published.

Components

  

Module	Notes
Abiword	Word processor
Gnumeric	Spreadsheet
Evolution:	Email, contacts, calendar
Planner	Project manager
Inkscape	Vector graphics
XSane	Scanning
Gnucash	Finances
gLables	Label designer
Glom	Database designer

 

Some of above tools are listed on the GNOME Office official website but not installed on the downloadable versions!

Applications

Hundreds of applications are available for GNOME. They enable people to employ a vast range of activities, including everything from playing media and editing photos to system administration. Most of these facilities are free of charge.

Banshee

Allows users to play music and videos, Stay entertained and up to date with podcasts and video podcasts.

Shotwell

It gives users the opportunity of organizing, editing and publishing photos. It’s easy to crop, sharpen and fix the colors on photos. Users also can setup multiple background slideshow.

Inkscape

Draw freely! This is a vector illustration application which allows users to produce stunning graphics in the web standard SVG format.

Tomboy

Tomboy is an application used for note-taking. It is Simple and easy to use, but with potential to help you organize the ideas and information you deal with every day.

Rhythmbox

This application is used to Organize and listen to music, rip CDs. Browse, preview, and download albums, features Internet radio and last.fm. It has good support for mass storage music players.

In contrast to other projects like OpenOffice.org, the integration between the different applications in this office suite is rather less. So GNOME Office could be considered as a collection of desktop productivity applications written for the GNOME environment not an complete office suite in the usual sense. (Samoladas and Stamelos)

Collaboration

GNOME relies to its participants. More than 3500 individuals have contributed changes to the project’s code repositories, including the employees of 106 companies. GNOME is a result of this huge collaboration. In addition, GNOME is governed along meritocratic principles.

Since 2000, the GNOME Foundation has acted as the custodian of the project. The Foundation is GNOME’s legal body. It supports the project through the collection and distribution of funds, acts as the interface between the project and its partners and provides strategic guidance.(about us/ gnome.org)

Comparison table

Specifications	Openoffice.org	GNOME office
Predecessor	StarOffice	AbiWord, Gnumeric
Costs in USD	Free	Free
License	LGPL	GPL
Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls) support	Yes	Yes
Portable Document Format support	With free plugins	Yes
HTML editor	OpenOffice.org Writer	No
Online editing	With free plugins	No
E-mail client	No	Evolution
Windows	Yes	Yes
Mac OS X	Yes	Yes
Linux	Yes	Yes

 

References

• GHALIMI, I. C. & CEO, I. 2007. BPM 2.0. IT-Reduz, Porto Alegre.
• GILLETT, S. E., LEHR, W. H., WROCLAWSKI, J. T. & CLARK, D. D. Year. A Taxonomy of Internet Appliances. In.
• IRIMESCU, D. 2008. Deployment of Open Standards in the Public Administration. Revista Informatica Economic nr, 3, 64.
• SAMOLADAS, I. & STAMELOS, I. Assessing free/open source software quality. Department of Informatics Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124.
• SKOCZEN, S. & BUSSMANN, R. W. 2006. Olorien Online peer-reviewed journal software for low-cost international organizations.