Week 6: Blogging Experience - The Final Wrap Up

Finally I have reached the end of the Web 2.0 adventure and what an exciting/strenuous 6 weeks it has been. I say this because this assignment started in week 3 for me , as you all know from my first post I was overseas, so ever since then I have been trying to catch up with this as well as everything else for other subjects.

The main goal of the Web 2.0 adventure was to explore several different types of web technologies and then report back to our blog about our findings/creations. We also used some of the web technologies as a communication medium amongst members of the group to work on assignments and comment on our progress. In terms of the five assessment criteria, I believe they all applied to the Web 2.0 adventure in some way and helped me in having a basis of how to structure my blog postings. Below I will describe each of them and their suitability as assessment criteria:

Participation: this was a very suitable criterion as we needed to work on the assignment and complete weekly tasks which set all of us a weekly goal.

Interaction & Communication: this was another very suitable criterion as the majority of the web technologies used communication amongst group members was a must to actually see it working and to also help people with difficulties.

Execution: this was another very suitable criterion as each web technology has its capabilities and some users took it to the limit where as some used it just basically, so this definitely allows that to be reflected.

Persistence: this criterion was useful because some of the web technologies had some difficulties for first time users (Google Wave for me especially lol) but most of them had good help and were relatively straight forward. I do believe this criterion could have a little less weighting and maybe it be applied elsewhere because it isn’t as demanding as some of the other criterion.

Reflection: this is a very good criterion and I believe it definitely deserves its percentage weighting because it allows the users to some up their experience which is this main objective of this assignment as well as to give insight as to what needs improvement and what worked well. These suggestions can help improve portions of the work for future students who may undertake the assignment.

In terms of how these activities have helped to develop my understanding and skills of web technologies I’d have to say has been a huge positive for me because to be frankly honest I don’t think I would have ever used any of them of it wasn’t task for this assignment. I am the type of person that likes to stick to the familiar and will not upgrade or change anything until the point of when I actually have to, hence my reason for my previous line. Honestly speaking the web technologies used probably won’t play much of a part in terms of where I plan to end up as in information professional, but all I can say is hey it doesn’t hurt to learn new things because I can’t predict my future and for all I know it could end up that they all become relevant.

In completing this assignment I found it relatively easy going, except for the one web technology GOOGLE WAVE as all of you who read my post will know. This web technology was absolutely shocking in terms of user friendliness and is one thing that I would recommend be removed from the assignment, aside from the fact that Google plans to extinguish it in the not to distant future meaning it will no longer be available anyway. Other than GOOGLE WAVE and the fact that I had a bit to catch up on when coming back in week 3 from overseas, I found the assignment free flowing and good because the weekly activities meant that it didn’t all need to be completed within a few days. As I just mentioned the fact that I had 4 weeks to do the assignment instead of 6 meant and also frequently using them meant that all web technologies are quite fresh in my mind.

Although I have heard of some of the web technologies, I had only used two of them very briefly and below I have made a list of the known/unknown:

Activities I knew beforehand:
Week 5: Social bookmarking and tagging
Week 6: Maps, mashups and more…

Activities I knew after:
Week1: Introduction to blogs
Week 2: RSS, wikis and collaborative content
Week 3: Micro blogging using Twitter
Week 4: Collaboration using Google Wave

The workload for the assignment I believe is perfect because considering the amount of class work for IKM, work from other subjects and weighting of the assignment it could be completed without overly stressing about the workload.

The communication process amongst group members I believe may be one aspect that could be improved slightly. Instead of actually using blogger to comment on help queries or ask for help I believe creating a web technology which everyone must use to communicate with group members would be the best way to go about it. Something like Facebook which the majority of people have these days would be a good option.

Thankyou for reading ;)