tranquilidad

Blogging

In addition to my eleventh hour Christmas shopping, I finally have had a chance to sit down and articulate my thoughts on blogging in BIT320.  So let me just jump right in....

Overall, the class blogosphere has allowed me to see the benefits of blogging as a knowledge management tool as applied in a collective working environment.  It has been particularly exciting, as it would appear that we, as a class, have been coming to this realization as the rest of the world does so as well.  While blogging itself is still somewhat of a work in process and the potential to view it as a forum for incessant rambling of online devotees remains, I feel our experience gives credence to the potential value of the blogging movement.

As far as transferability goes, there is a high level of which I feel will be revealed in the not so distant future.  As technology becomes increasingly more commoditized, so too will the need to more efficiently share and manage information.  In order to fully realize the value of blogging In a classroom setting, the  commitment of most if not all participants, and perhaps most importantly the administrator/professor, is required.   Bud's constant monitoring of issues both within the blogosphere and at the beginning of class allowed for questions to be addressed that students' peers could not or simply did not address.  While it may be unrealistic to expect a less-technically savvy/dependent Art History professor, for example, to exhibit this high level of commitment, there a certainly a significant number of professors that I can think of from my own experiences that utilize email almost as though they were using an instant messenging service.  These educators, who are both willing and able to make themselves remotely available to respond to their students issues, are obviously those that would take most rapidly to blogging and the subsequent realization of its benefits.

As far as participation from students, it is evident that this is a highly debatable topic.  In initially utilizing the class blogosphere, it was indeed necessary to mandate participation in order to introduce the medium and increase students' familiarity.  However, I feel that once this is established, it is necessary to specifically encourage value-added participation.  This is not an issue unique to blogging.  Most professors utilize some form of grading based upon class participation, but I have found the best classroom experiences have been those in which the professor does not just reward students for merely being present, but for addressing challenging issues and most importantly, asking relevant, thought-provoking questions.  While Bud did indeed state that blog participation grading would be based on value-added, setting a quota seemed rather contradictory.  It would be interesting to see how students' blogging activity would continue after an initial quota was removed.  I would speculate that after an initial familiarization period, in classes where students would truly benefit from sharing knowledge, they would realize the benefits and take to blogging on their own if rewarded for value-added.   

While "value-added" is indeed a rather subjective measurement, utilizing it in place of a quota would serve to minimize the dichotomy inherent in blogging in classes that utilize a "curve" grading system, i.e. Business School classes.  In classes where students' grades are dependent upon how they rank against their classmates, it is almost as if we have an incentive not to share information.  As Project 2 progressed, I became increasingly aware of this issue.  For example, with the possibility of receiving 10 points of extra credit for successfully implementing an RSS feed, a group that achieves this daunting task has little incentive to blog about it since our projects are graded according to rank.  Sharing this type of truly valuable information must either be intrinsically motivated by students' desires to maximize the learning experiences of their peers (sorry, but not very realistic at the B-school), or be done so out of their own self-interest in anticipating that the professor will realize the value of their contribution.  This is not to say that the quota system did not encourage valuable contributions, as evidenced by contributions of students such as M Go Blue.  However, in order to truly maximize the contributions of all members,  value-added must be rewarded or the curve system must abolished, or both.  That being said, it comes down to which aspects the administrator has control over in implementing a class blogosphere.

If you have made it this far, I hope this blog has provided some food for thought.  I'm interested to hear any feedback, in agreement or not.  Best wishes to everyone this holiday and thanks for a great experience this semester.

December 20, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

Give the Gift of Blogging

Today I start my Christmas shopping.  Late I know, but  that seems to be how it goes every year since I have been at U of M.  I'm sure most of you are far more prepared than I am for this holiday season, but nevertheless, I thought some of you newly-established bloggers would be interested in this offer I noticed on TypePad: TypePad promo.  If you renew or upgrade your TypePad subscription, you receive a second free subscription. At $39 a year, not a bad deal if you were interested in continuing the service once our free subscription ends as well as inviting others to join the blogging realm.  Interclass gifting, anyone?  The offer is good until January 15th.  Happy Holidays!
 

December 20, 2004 in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Nice Job, everyone

My apologies for the delayed observations, but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed seeing the culmination of a semester's worth of BIT320 via Thursday's presentations.  The great thing about this class is that we actually get to apply what we are learning to create tangible value for another organization and I must say, it was really exciting to see how everyone chose to do this utilizing the same toolset, but creating different outcomes and interfaces.  There seemed to be a high level of accomplishment from all of the groups, both functionally and stylistically.  Hopefully, everyone got some good ideas from other presentations as we polish up our finalized project.  Best of luck this week!

December 12, 2004 in Project Issues | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Comments?

The project 2 requirements description says we need to comment for our XSQL pages and XSLT stylesheets, but based on Bud's response  to  Smiling Chen's post, it doesnt sound like we need to worry about it at all.  I just want to make sure that I am correct in this interpretation.  Thanks!

December 08, 2004 in Project Issues | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack (1)

My Yahoo! RSS upgrade

Last week Yahoo announced the launch of their My Yahoo! upgrade which is largely focused on increasing both the availability and readability of RSS feeds.  Although we all signed up for My Yahoo accounts at the beginning of the semester, I have reverted to using the Sage feedreader for the most part. But for those of you who use My yahoo and haven't made the upgrade, it seems to be much more user-friendly.  It's easier to customize and rearrange your page, and its readability is better all around.  Not to mention the increase in content availability, which they doubled to 300,000 searchable feeds.  Check out this  yahoo news article for more info or go to your own My Yahoo! page to upgrade if you use the service and haven't done so already.  

November 29, 2004 in Information Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

befuddled blogging

For some reason when I check the recent posts for our class blog, my most recent blogs don't display.  The same thing happens when I access my blog  through the Weblog Smartspace link.  It doesn't seem to be updating or something because it shows my blog from 11/18 as the most recent, when I actually made two posts on the 23rd.  My recent blogs display in typepad, so i don't know what's up.  Any thoughts?

November 26, 2004 in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Add audio to your blogs

For those of you who have played with moblogging, this technology may be of potential interest to you.  Audblog  offers a service to bloggers through which they can record four minute messages by calling their number from any phone.  Audblog then hosts the quicktime audio file and publishes a "play this audio file" graphic on the subscriber's blog.  You can try the service for free, but after the first blog its $3 per month which includes 12 audio blogs per month.  I personally do not feel the urge to have my voice sent across the world wide web, but for those of you who really want to be heard, let me know what you think of the service.    I can definitely see the potential marketing uses of this tool, however, especially for music artists and record companies.

November 23, 2004 in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Google sees benefits in corporate blogging

I recently came across an article that relates to the class's recent blog converation about the use of blogs in the workplace, specifically for promoting bottom-up change. Check it out here.  According to the article, shortly after Google's acquisition of Blogger, they instituted an internal blog for their employees.  Some of the employees' uses of the blog include "people keeping track of meeting notes, people sharing diagnostics information, people sharing snippets of code, as well as more personal uses, like letting co-workers know what they're thinking about and what they're up to."  Sounds a lot like our class blog.  Of particular interest in the article is the mention of the emerging market of business enterprise blogging.  While many companies have the capabilities to institute a casual employee blogosphere, the demand for more formal  and functional systems is sure to increase in the future.  While this is somewhat different from our class's previous discussions about the possibility of blogging for profit, it is interesting to think about the value of having blog expertise with the increasing interest in blogs as business communication tools.

November 23, 2004 in Information Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Yet another use of RSS

I recently missed my opportunity to buy tickets to a show that I really would have wanted to attend had I known it was coming to the D.  Too bad they sold out before I found out they were available.  More often what happens is I hear about a show through the grapevine too late to get decent seats and I end up in the nosebleed seats stage far, far right or up in the balcony.  Sure I save money, and if i really want to stay on top of the music scene, I could actually take time to ready the weekly emails I get from Ticketmaster, but usually these just end up with the rest of my spam in the trash.  I think a much more effective way of keeping up to date would be through an RSS feed, so I checked to see if Ticketmaster had an RSS feed.  As far as I can tell, they don't but I did find an RSS feed here at tickets4u.com.  You can pick a feed based on city, MLB team, or NFL team.  Pretty cool... I wonder when Ticketmaster will get on the ball. 

November 10, 2004 in Information Business | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

laptop shopping

While I may not be as avid a blogger as Big Blog in the Sky, it is not without good reason. As I mentioned in a previous post Computer Recycling? my desktop recently crashed. I have been holding off from buying a new laptop, but it is just not efficient for me to wait any longer. It is difficult to remain active in the class blogosphere, not to mention staying on top of computer assignments, emails, and papers, while doing all my work from a computer lab. That being said, does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations for particular laptops to consider as well as where the best place to buy from? I am going for the best bang for my buck since my personal budget is very limited. I'm thinking around the $1000-1200 range. Some people have recommended the union computer showcase. Does anyone have any experience buying computers from them?

Thanks for the help....maybe someday I too will be a moblogger....

November 02, 2004 in Information Business | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

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  • Yet another use of RSS
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