Web 2.0 - help or hype? : social softwares and their value to libraries

Over the summer of 2007, as Service Innovation Officer at the University of Warwick Library, I was asked to write a report on Web 2.0 technologies, and I spent some time investigating different technologies and social softwares. The only way to explore these social softwares is to use them. Make friends on them, install applications, get content and try to use them to their limits. I investigated a number of different technologies all labelled as "Web 2.0", and the ones with most potential for libraries are discussed here

Feed Me Now.

A day in the life of an RSS feed reader

Application of web 2.0 in cartographic education. Is it time for cartography 2.0?

The term web 2.0 was first used in 2004 at a conference where the organizers focused on the new generation web services. Although web is not software and it has no versions everybody understood this term and also understood the real meaning behind it. In the last 30 years, cartography considerable changed and we may think of using a similar term for our science: cartography 2.0. Although web 2.0 is not a clear and easily definable term, we can list new features of the web which has formed this new term. Wiki, blog, RSS, mashup applications, social networking are the key features (and other less notorious ones are still under development) which are not concrete applications, but rather philosophies. Wiki is a type of website that allows the users to easily edit/change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. Can we effectively use this new technique in cartography? Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, as personal online diaries; they can be part of a wider network of social media. There are some cartographic blogs available (operated mostly by younger cartographers) which can give new chances for collaborative work, so they may help the cartographic education. One of the most prominent mashup applications is the websites which are connected to GoogleEarth to use their basemaps/satellite images to add their own geographically located contents. These applications are also used by non-cartographers to help them to “make maps”. Are these new features enough to introduce the new term: cartography 2.0

The use of feed readers as a source of online resources for teachers

Las posibilidades que ofrece Internet a los profesionales de la enseñanza son inmensas. Su capacidad para la comunicación global, el acceso a ingentes cantidades de recursos sobre cualquier tema y en los formatos más diversos, ha convertido a la red en una herramienta indispensable para las labores docentes. Por lo tanto la utilización de herramientas que permiten optimizar y gestionar la información online, se convierte en una necesidad imperativa para los profesionales educativos.The possibilities offered by Internet to teachers are immense. Its capacity for global communication, access to vast amounts of resources on any subject and in many different formats, the network has become an indispensable tool for teaching assignments. The use of tools to optimize and manage online information, becomes an imperative need for educational professionals. Colossal amounts of resources available on the network can slip through your fingers if tools to systematize and organize the information accessed and which may be relevant are not used. It is an issue often neglected or ineffectively resolved with bookmark folders or favorite links

Academic staff development in the area of technology enhanced learning in the UK HEIs

This paper reports on a study on staff development in the area of technology enhanced learning in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that took place in November 2011. Data for this study were gathered via an online survey emailed to the Heads of e-Learning Forum (HeLF) which is a network comprised of one senior member of staff per UK institution leading the enhancement of learning and teaching through the use of technology. Prior to the survey, desk-based research on some universities’ publicly available websites gathered similar information about staff development in the area of technology enhanced learning. The online survey received 27 responses, approaching a quarter of all UK HEIs subscribed to the Heads of e-Learning forum list (118 is the total number). Both pre-1992 (16 in number) and post-1992 Universities (11 in number) were represented in the survey and findings indicate the way this sample UK HEIs are approaching staff development in the area of TEL. The survey’s main research question was ‘what provision do UK HEIs make for academic staff development in the area of technology enhanced learning’. Twelve questions, both closed and open-ended, were devised in order to gather enough information about how staff development needs in the area of technology enhanced learning are addressed by different UK institutions. Following the justification of the adopted research methodology, the findings from the online survey are analyzed and discussed and conclusions are drawn

Mapping web personal learning environments

A recent trend in web development is to build platforms which are carefully designed to host a plurality of software components (sometimes called widgets or plugins) which can be organized or combined (mashed-up) at user's convenience to create personalized environments. The same holds true for the web development of educational applications. The degree of personalization can depend on the role of users such as in traditional virtual learning environment, where the components are chosen by a teacher in the context of a course. Or, it can be more opened as in a so-called personalized learning environment (PLE). It now exists a wide array of available web platforms exhibiting different functionalities but all built on the same concept of aggregating components together to support different tasks and scenarios. There is now an overlap between the development of PLE and the more generic developments in web 2.0 applications such as social network sites. This article shows that 6 more or less independent dimensions allow to map the functionalities of these platforms: the screen dimensionmaps the visual integration, the data dimension maps the portability of data, the temporal dimension maps the coupling between participants, the social dimension maps the grouping of users, the activity dimension maps the structuring of end users–interactions with the environment, and the runtime dimensionmaps the flexibility in accessing the system from different end points. Finally these dimensions are used to compare 6 familiar Web platforms which could potentially be used in the construction of a PLE

Design and Implementation of the UniProt Website

The UniProt consortium is the main provider of protein sequence and annotation data for much of the life sciences community. The "www.uniprot.org":http://www.uniprot.org website is the primary access point to this data and to documentation and basic tools for the data. This paper discusses the design and implementation of the new website, which was released in July 2008, and shows how it improves data access for users with different levels of experience, as well as to machines for programmatic access