http://solr.bccampus.ca/wiki/index.php/SREB_Web2.0
Next week I am back in Atlanta to give a talk on “Web 2.0” to the educational technology working group of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).
At this point in the game, giving a talk on “Web 2.0” is pretty daunting, not because the topic is that difficult but because it’s been done so well so many times before that the challenge is how to keep it fresh and interesting.
I thought about this for a while and came up with the above approach. First off, rather than try to speak of “Web 2.0” in the abstract, I decided (inspired by Cogdog’s recent examples) to tell a story, in this case my own story of the various points where I came to accept that something new IS going on with Web 2.0. Like many, my tendency was to try and understand the present and the future in terms of the past. While at times this can serve you well, it also results in a tendency to underestimate the magnitude of true discontinuities. And it seems to me that anyone still needing a “what is Web 2.0” talk is likely suffering from this phenomenon, underestimating the disruption these innovations are already affecting.
The other approach I thought I’d try is to do the presentation as a page in mediawiki and then use the mediawiki presentation script during the presentation. (As an aside, I modified the script to work a little better, if you care you can install it from this page.) The idea, obviously, being to
- use Web 2.0 tools to talk about Web 2.0
- turn the presentation into a demonstration of some Web 2.0 phenomenom (write once/read anywhere; participatory web, etc)
That’s where you come in. I am about to send this page off to the organizers so that they can circulate it to the attendees with the request that they add to it, but I’m also looking for feedback and additions for you.
Each section has two links to areas I’m hoping people will add to. Each section heading has a link where I have added some additional notes, links and an invitation to steer the talk on that particular topic. And at the bottom of each section, there is a link for people to add their own stories of how they came to stop doubting and embrace the change being heralded in by Web 2.0. It’s there that I especially hope you will consider adding links back to your own blogs, your own personal stories of how you came to understand these various aspects of Web 2.0
If you decide to, you can edit the wiki using a generic account I’ve set up (username:wiki, password:wikiwiki). I’m hoping for at least a couple of outside contributions in an effort to demonstrate to decision makers from 16 southern states the power of the network. So please, consider adding a link or note on one of the sub-pages, and I will try to then work it into the larger presentation. – SWL
I like the Mediawiki GM extension… works well here. As you know, I’ve been using a similar method with PmWiki and S5– works pretty much the same way except that the user doesn’t have to have any extensions (e.g. this Golden Oldie)
The problem I have with all of them is dealing with screen resolution issues. Not a problem when I’m channeling Lessig or using my own similar home-grown one word/image/phrase per page model, but that has real drawbacks in terms of being meaningful to people after the fact.
I’ve finally given up and just gone back to regular wiki pages– with all the variance of projectors, displays, etc I was doing so much scrolling that I might as well have the convenience of the full page!
Having just finished giving this talk and had just about every single piece of technology go wrong that could, I am suddenly growing wistful for Powerpoint ;-( The hotel’s internet borked on my machine, so I had to ditch it, so now greasemonkey extension, and then the new machine (IE, ugghh) wouldn’t open links in new windows. Powerpoint never did that to me! Boohoo, woe is me.