Safety Concerns with using Web2.0 tools

This afternoon I finished editing the second podcast in my series on Emerging Instructional Technologies. I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Tawni Ferrarini, Associate Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship at Northern Michigan University and chair of the National Association of Economic Education's technology committee.

Tawni raised some important issues about some of the collaborative Web2.0 tools that make documents public and accessible to anyone on the web. It is important to temper the use of these emerging tools with a thoughtful analysis of unintended consequences with documents in the public domain. If you'd like to listen to my podcast with Tawni, you can access it at: http://lalindell.podbean.com/

This has been an interesting topic of discussion in our Emerging Instructional Technologies class and it is clear that some members of the class have fewer concerns about disclosing information about themselves than others. There is a lot that has been written on this topic and ISTE has partnered with e-schools to provided educator resources at http://www.iste.org/inhouse/safe/

Other examples include this posting regarding the concerns about Web2.0 tools in the classroom at http://http//wplinfostuff.blogspot.com/2006/07/web20-wikis-ultimate-tool-for-online.html, or see Derek's posting from earlier this semester about how much information to reveal. While these concerns are on the forefront of discussion in K-12 settings, I wonder how often adults think about unintended consequences with information disclosure? ...still the digital immigrant...Lois

Promoting Web2.0 tools in your email signature

Catching up on some of my blog reading. I am overwhelmed by the number of postings that are generated by the Mashable site and many I don't take time to read, but this one caught my eye -- adding Web2.0 tools to your email signature file as a means of promoting your Web2.0 activities. This is a gadget from Yahoo that you can add to all your outgoing email signatures to promote your blog.

Take a look at this posting from Mashable which has the information to add the tools to your email signature http://mashable.com/2007/10/27/mybloglog-giving-you-the-web-20-sigfile/

still the digital immigrant ... Lois

Interesting Use of Social Networking Technology at the Smithsonian

Catching up on my reading list that has been sitting patiently among my delicious tags.

In September it was announced that the Smithsonian Institution was launching an interactive website to build collections for its newest museum that won't open until 2015.

The museum is the National Museum of African American History and Culture and with the online content that people are contributing a virtual museum now exists. Here's the link for the virtual museum: http://nmaahc.si.edu/

The IBM corporation has donated hardware and software to allow for the use of social networking technologies to be employed on the interactive website so that people can add to the collections and direct the content of this new museum. "The museum thought, ‘Let's harness this. Let's build a social network that brings together people interested in the African American experience ... all those people that are your visitors but who have great stories to tell," said John Tolva, IBM's senior manager for cultural programs, in an article in the e-School News magazine (see http://www.eschoolnews.com//news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7388)

I'm not the first blogger to write about this topic -- see for example this blog entry from the Netherlands at http://scherlund.blogspot.com/2007/09/smithsonian-debuts-virtual-museum.html, and this entry from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2429/virtual-museum-of-african-american-history-opens, and IBM's posting on this venture at http://greateribm.typepad.com/web_log/2007/week39/index.html

It will be interesting to watch how this type of application may spread to other endeavors. ...still the digital immigrant...Lois

Note: Logo from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History at http://nmaahc.si.edu/