Week 2 ...Very Late Week 2...Google Stuff

Other Google Stuff - Google Docs

I have been using Google Docs for a while now for both work and personal use. For work, it has been great to allow other staff to collaborate on documents we were working on together. The only problem I found (and it was a big problem) was that the formatting was lost when you pulled a document from MS Word into Google Docs...very irritating when I had formatted a table of contents and headers correctly...so once this happened went back working on the version on our network, which restricted us to only working on the plan at work.

Recently, I needed to compose a staff survey for work.Found that Google Docs had expanded to incorporate forms....it was fantastic and easy to use. Here is a link to our first draft. There was no restriction on maximum number of questions and all questions could have been compiled into the associated spreadsheet..great find.

Other Google Stuff - Google Reader

Where do I start..well I started using Google Reader years ago (November 2006 I just found out when I checked my Reader). This was right around the time that Google decommissioned Google Notes (think that's what is was called) which I absolutely loved. At the beginning of using Reader I added heaps of amazing RSS feeds  (Steve Abrahm was my favourite blogger) and used it all the time but started to move away from it, due to time constraints, and because Twitter came along and change things...much easier to get through 100 tweets than 100 blogs then decide what posts to continue to read in more depth.

#1 In The Beginning (again)

Am using the blog I originally set up the last time I did similar training. As you can see, I don't love blogs and won't fill up the blogosphere by creating a totally new blog. Rather, I love reading other peoples blogs and commenting on them and other review sites. I like Twitter a whole lot better as you only have 140 characters to get your point across.

Week 1
Spent some time today (finally) resetting up the advanced settings on my blog and just remembering all the W3C stuff I used to have to worry about back in the days when I was a website creator for local government....in those days there was no such thing as web 2.0 and we tried to create content through user interaction via adding it ourselves when users would email us their stuff!!!

So that is my take on blogs....only blog if you have something useful to say and if you can get your point in less words, use Twitter. I am sure my fellow workmates will think this quite funny cause I never shut up.

What do I think of wikis? They are ok too and great if you don't have any coding skill or access to CMS software to create a website that allows collaborative user input (that can be moderated for accuracy). While I use wikipedia myself on occasion, it is only ever as a starting point and I always cross check the info. The reference list of a wikipedia article is usually a good place to find other information. For students, I always tell them never to trust and while it may be 90% accurate (reference?) I've seen the wrong 10% quoted in assessment tasks and that isn't helpful.

Read an article from the SMH about a new wiki called wikifashion and I suppose it highlights what you can do with a wiki. It also highlights the issue of relying on collaborators for input....some of the info hasn't been updated since 2009.

See how much I don't like blogs!

The How to of Web 2.0 Training

Well, I've signed up for this training through work with the rest of my team....sort of should of checked the details of the training a bit more as it looks like "23 Things" first run by Charlotte Mecklenberg Library Service in the USA (back in the days when it was the top LS in the States!). I actually ran the training program for my previous employer when SLNSW involved NSW public libraries. Anyway, there looks to be a few new tools along the way so am looking forward to checking them out.

Off I go again....