RSS feeds in Higher Ed... are we using them?

Looking through a few peer college websites, it seems as though overall, there aren't a lot of blatant uses for syndication other than advertising one's own blog.  On RISD's blog for parents, alumni and potential donors, one may "subscribe" through an RSS feed button.  However on the main site, it does not appear that there is much use as the actual website contains very few updates.

In an article on StraightNorth, a marketing blogger, Brad Shorr argues that business could get more use from RSS feeds in terms of marketing, but don't take advantage of this opportunity, rather, many simply use RSS feeds for news.  Corporate giants such as John Deere, Target and GE all use RSS feeds to push out news and blog content to consumers. 

Reflections on working collaboratively with Team Flower

We're about halfway through our course now, and tonight, we are officially done with Alice.  For the past two weeks, I've worked collaboratively with Team Flower - that's Sam and Ben - on our Alice World, "He can call me flower if he wants to" based on the movie Bambi.  This project was harder than I thought it was going to be.  It was more fun than I thought it would be, too.  I also learned where I fit in a team.  My role, as always, is stage manager.  I work best when I can herd, coordinate, fit the widgets in the boxes, set up meetings, brainstorming sessions, take notes and minutes, outline a project, and then move everyone through it.  This comes naturally to me.  My siblings used to say that the my little sister was the bossy one, but come to think of it, quiet as I was as a kid, I boss people around pretty well.  That doesn't sound nice.  And I'm not mean or bitchy bossy - just have a vision of what it all should be, and like to set the route.

So that's what I did for Team Flower, small as that role was.  Though I enjoyed working in Alice in the programming, Sam really seemed to take off with it - she has a knack for taking vision and putting it into the program.  Ben was our Big Thinker.  Our Visionary.  He wanted this to be the Alice Project of the century.  Unfortunately, the second week he was sick, so many of his big plans had to be scrapped in favor of practical concerns.  My overall concern was story - that it had a beginning, a middle, and an end that made sense.  So Sam and I agreed that the simpler the concept and the story flow, the better.  We were able to get creative with the characters and dialogue, and the dialogue, crazy as it is, does flow naturally.

And here's what's cool.  Tuesday night, we had an online meeting on Wikispaces, and we were DONE in a half hour - it worked.  And even cooler - presenting with the four other teams tonight was really fun.  It was neat to see how the other teams worked.  I feel like it brought our class together.

The astronaut gazes off in the direction of the Wizard

This snapshot makes me laugh because our story was just so silly.  And it was such a challenge making the bunny and the horse move together.  Sam did a great job.  But the idea for the bunny on the horse was Ben's.  Great work, Team Flower!

Going WAAYYYYYY Back.

For our homework assignment, we were asked to use the Internet Archive Wayback machine to investigate a page's history.  My first inclination was to check out AOL, since I was on it the first few days it was released, back in the Delphi days. In 1996 I also became friends in a chat room called "The Nice People's Room" with a nice, polite young man who liked discussing Thomas Hardy.  After much in-depth conversation over a piece of cake and coffee one afternoon in Mystic, CT, we clicked.  Ten years later and that man became my husband.  So... nostalgia, sentimental musings, call it what you will... let's journey now, shall we? Wayyyy back... to 1997 which is the first time that a true snapshot of AOL is taken.  I think that is also when wayback machine was established.

 (I cannot provide a screenshot, so y'all will have to go lookin'.  Click HERE)

What I love about this is that I remember first off, before anything else, the frustration with having to wait for the freaking dial up to load the page.  First would come text, then slowly, like molasses, came the icon, and sometimes, it wouldn't connect.  And I would cry tears of bitter rage.  Ah, internet addiction back in the days when call waiting could really screw up a conversation.

Nowadays, it has changed a lot.  See HERE.  It comes up in a flash, contains images, video, sparkly things.  But I have to admit, I no longer use AOL.  


The next part of our assignment was to check out the top ten sites on the top 500 list on Alexa.com.  They are all Web 2.0 sites.  They clearly rank in order of usage. 

Alexa's top ten sites, according to traffic rank:
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Yahoo
5. Live
6. Baidu
7. Wikipedia
8. Blogger
9. MSN
10. Tencent

Now we have to find a list of popular Web 2.0 applications, and select one we like.  What web 2.0 features does it incorporate?

I chose Prezi, because I don't have Powerpoint on this computer ( and you know, I'm too cheap to buy Office).  This is a great little application.  Web 2.0 features include user presentations created with Prezi and posted in the spirit of Open Source.  Also, one is able to log in using facebook.  So it's connected.  Very cool.

Our next challenge (boy, isn't this exciting???) is to set up and exchange emails through gmail.com.  Since we did this as part of our class in the beginning, and since at work we use Google Apps for Education, I id not set up a new email for this assignment.  But, I can tell you, in answer to the burning question, "Identify two different ways that Gmail uses AJAX to provide a rich experience as you send, reply to, delete, or manage your email messages" :

1.  Instant updates, meaning, no waiting for the email to come back up after you've gone out of it.
2.  Auto-complete.  When I type the beginning of a friend's name, it types in the rest based on my contacts list.  It also auto-completes search items in the search box.

Okay, the last thing we had to do was to go on to Viddler.com and make a video.  I'm a little shy about this.  Call me old school, but all these public out-there app sites kinda freak me out, privacy wise.  But not enough to keep me from making a silly video with my pups, Charlie and Coco.

I am sure you are asking, why didn't you post this all big and proud right here embedded and all? Well, because when I went to download it from viddler, it didn't do anything.  I checked my download box.  Not there.  So you'll have to live with the link.

And that's all for homework this week.  Ta!