The CLC Blog

You may have heard the term Web 2.0 and wondered what on Earth it is. Well Web 2.0 is all about the shift from being a read only consumer driven web to one where we can contribute and publish as well as consume. Web 2.0 is not just one thing. Its not something you install on your computer, nor will it actually make the Internet work quicker. What Web 2.0 is though is a series of websites which allow you to easily publish to the Internet everything from text to images to sounds and even video. We can now be creators of content and share our work with people around the world. These technologies can often be quite social, enabling us not only to publish work but to get feedback from other people who have experienced our work.Well where are these technologies and how do I use them and importantly how much are they going to cost me? To start at the last part of the question, most of these are free. Where there is a cost it is usually quite cheap for the amateur.

OK lets get started.

Blogs

Blogs (weblogs) are online journals that people post to. Each person has there own blog and often they have a topic or theme that they write about. There are blogs from people who work in Educational technology to Iraqi’s talking about life from their view as opposed to that of the West, to everyday people talking about their life and interests such as food . There are a number of sites out there which can enable you to quickly set up a blog from free. Google’s own Blogger will enable you to get up and running quickly. There are some others such as TypePad which may have more features but for a fee.

When you set up a blog you can simply post new articles and publish them. Most blog sites allow readers to leave comments. These can be moderated by the owner of the blog. These comments do enable you to get a feel for how your writing is received and in the case of Fan Fiction is very important to the blogger. Fan Fiction is a blog that enables you to write fiction in the fiction worlds of other people’s novels and movies. So after reading a good book and wondering what happens next to the characters, people write their own stories and through comments and reviews can edit their work to improve their storytelling.

Some blog sites enable you to post from mobile phones. In this way bloggers can post images and text on the move and often get news items published on the net before the professionals do because they are right there in the thick of it blogging from the event.

[EDITED: Steve, could you at least mention the Blogging engine that drives our blog! After researching all the different Open Source CMS, I decided that WordPress would actually do all that we wanted and way more. The difference in using a system like WordPress is that because it is developed by a community for the use of the community, additional features are constantly being added, by way of modules or widgets.]

Wiki’s

Wiki’s are websites that can be created collaboratively. An example is the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That means that anyone can edit articles or indeed add new ones. At first this may sound insane. How can you rely on something that anyone can edit. Well it works because it has such a large user base that will quickly correct any inaccuracies and fix any vandalism. Every edit that is made is stored, so if a page is vandalised it can quickly be restored to a previous save version. Wiki’s are often used to create collaborative documentation, where the workload is shared out and all can contribute to the work at the same time. Wiki’s can be public or private. A quick way to set up a wiki is to use PBwiki. By enabling collaboration on documents in this way it enables work to be produced faster that if left to a few editors and contributors. FreewareWiki is a good example of what can be done. Someone has created a list of free software and reviews and tips. As the team find new pieces of software it is easy for anyone of them to add it to their site.

Photo Galleries

A good example of an online photo gallery is Flickr. Flickr allows you to upload your pictures either as a private gallery for friends and family or to publish your work for the world. The power of this is again in the comments people leave behind. If you are an amateur photographer, getting feedback from others of similar mind can be very important in developing their skills as a photographer.

Other Notables

There are Web 2.0 tools out there. del.ici.ous is a website book marking site. You can bookmark websites, give the links a keywords (Tags) that mean something to you. You can get to your bookmarks on any computer and also using the tags see other websites that cover the same interests. So if you bookmark a really good web site on cooking and use that keyword as a tag. Then other people who have used that tag in their bookmarks can be linked to each other so you get a whole load more bookmarks of cooking sites available to you. Because people have took the time to bookmark these you can bet that they are going to be more noteworthy that the usual stream of search engine results.

Writely is an online word processor. I am actually writing this using the tool. I can save my work online but also save it to my computer as a Word document, an Open Office document or a PDF. You can create documents collaboratively and also use it to post to your blog. As it has better editing features that the usual blogging tools this is a good idea.

Anyway I hope this has given you some places to get started. Remember that you all have something to contribute and that using these tools its easy to get your thoughts and work published for the world. What are you waiting for. Stop reading me and get on with it.