Skills day: Brian Kelly, UKOLN: Podcasting, Blogging and Wikis
Brian Kelly describes how he uses web 2.0 technologies to do his job at UKOLN
You can see the slides that accompanied Brian’s presentation on the Skills day wiki
Involved in the web since January 1993 having discovered it in December 1992 and getting very excited despite everyone else thinking that the future lay in Gopher… Many at the time thought that the web was a flaky thing that could not provide critical services. They realised they were wrong within 6 months. The same argument goes on today with the claim that web 2.0 is just fluff.
So, we are in a period of flux and change but we need to engage and experiment and learn. We need to be at the leading edge of doing these things.
Blogs
UK Web Focus blog is one of my main channels for experimenting, engaging , embedding objects etc. Exciting that JISC providing the infrastructure for all of us to to do this stuff. The bigger issues aren’t about the tech but about the content and the purpose. So many of my my postings are about those things.
Blog policies: who is the target audience, scope, processes, QA, and the thinking out loud - saying that this is not polished thought with a small committee polishing nuggets but about engaging with people so that we can all learn - it’s part of the learning process. It’s exactly what FE and HE are about. Wll try to avoid spelling errors etc but not the end of the world if something like that crops up occasionally.
Services may want to think about things like this…
Also RSS feeds, can have it delivered by email, could be added to a JISCMail list - not necessarily imposing a web-based view of the world.
Of course, we also need to be able to demonstrate that we are making an appropriate return and it’s easy to produce stats and figures showing numbers of users and to measure effectiveness of dissemination strategies and indications of impact. Can also demonstrate scope and global audience.
Coming up to the first anniversary of the blog so we invited readers’ comments on technical environment and feedback on the content (content, frequency, length…). Feedback was positive and also discovered that blog has two diverse audiences which means that it may be worth splitting it into multiple blogs.
Time issues: it’s very closely integrated into my other work - giving talks and presentations, writing papers etc - I use the community to help with presentations and papers by posting ideas and gathering comments and views beforehand.
But, it’s not necessarily for everybody. Writing a blog is a bit like giving a talk or Perl-scripting - not everybody can do it. It’s part of the portfolio of services that orghanisations can provide but needs to reflect individual strenghts.
Wikis
Wikis are used for:
- Joint work
- Support events
To support and event can upload information beforehand, can have discussion, support it afterwards etc. Part of it is building up a community - so could have pictures, a social area and so on. At conferences, with breakout groups notes can be easily shared.
The technology is becoming invisible - people just come along and use it. It’s becoming embedded.
So, how can these technologies be integrated? Use widgets to embed video streaming, YouTube etc - blogs and wikis increasingly support additional tools.
Have been uploading presentations to Facebooks. Some I upload beforehand to get feedback beforehand. I use slideshare to maximise exposure and feedback and to enhance euse (embed or download slides). can learn from each other - people who like slides might also have slides that I like, too, and I can reuse them using a Creative Commons licence.
Social networks (such as Facebook) also provide additional dissemination channels and benefits of network effect. Can embed blog as a feed. Maximising routes to information.
Multimedia
Videos can be uploaded to various services and easily embedded into blogs, webpages etc. Can also be synched with Powerpoint, slides etc and uploded to services.
What are the barriers?
- conservatism
- legal issues
- finding time
- finding resources
- ideology
- reliance on third party services
JISCMail: has technical limitations - walled garden - long URIs, changing URIs etc but it’s also popular with many users (and note that email can deliver RSS feeds, blogs etc)
Social networks (and blogs) aren’t for everyone but for many it can provide a variety of benefits. Do you have a web 2.0 strategy for your service?
Web 2.0 - let’s just do it!
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I enjoyed the notion of a wet paint wiki surrounding an event or should i say at the core of an event – my experience of introducing these technologies for an event is that it must be central to the planning of the event from the start and not bolted - this also to ensure sufficient resource allocation is made.