Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD

Exploring Other Ways to Comment for Day 26

Since the challenge for today was to think about using multimedia and other ways to comment on blogs I decided to review and explore some ways of using multimedia in this blog and for blog commenting.

My Voki

The first multimedia application that came to mind for today’s activity was the use of the Voki.

The Voki is a fun way of creating a talking voice character or a computer-generated avatar, but it wouldn’t be easily available for posting comments in a blog.

Sharing a Health, Nutrition & Wellness Lecture

The next multimedia option was using .docstoc. I’ve already included one lecture of my on the Ethical Challenges of the Medical and Healthcare Internet in a prior post on Discovering Medical Ethical Challenges Lecture on .docstoc.

I uploaded a new lecture to my .docstoc one that I recently gave on Health, Nutrition and Wellness, on How to Live a HEALTHY LIFE.

.docstoc is a great way of sharing professional documents, such as PowerPoint presentations. It would be more than one might need to respond to a typical blog post, but might be included as a linked reference.

A Look at Other Multimedia Options

I’d already briefly looked at several multimedia options for getting PowerPoint Lectures online.

• .docstoc - http://www.docstoc.com - .docstoc is a user generated community where you can find and share professional documents. Upload your documents for all the world to share.
• Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net - SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. It is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience.
• Slides on Line - http://www.slidesonline.org - a digital library made for physicians worldwide to access slide presentation on most updated research and clinical disorders.

Two new Multimedia options discovered as part of Day 24’s post include:

• VoiceThread - http://voicethread.com - A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.
• Scrapblog - http://www.scrapblog.com - Scrapblog enables everyday people to express themselves online in a creative way. This service allows for combining photos, videos, audio and text to create multimedia scrapbooks.

Another Multimedia option that I’ve seen used quite a bit.

• One True Media - http://www.onetruemedia.com - One True Media an easy-to-use online service that makes consumers both producer and director of their own video creations. We offer an innovative and painless way to transform video and photos into polished video montages that can be shared with friends and family.

A Look at Other Ways to Comment in a Blog

I took a look at the suggested resources for discovering different ways to comment in a blog.

• Seesmic - http://www.seesmic.com- allows you to create video comments that can be uploaded to blogs using WordPress. According to their wiki you can also

Record one or more Seesmic video’s to a post.

Accept authenticated or anonymous video comments.

Moderate video comments exactly like text comments.

• Snapvine - http://www.snapvine.com - Using the snapvine Voice Player, users are able to safely communicate, in their own voices, with their online community with snapvine’s easy-to-use products that work on any cell phone, with any carrier.

Thoughts on Multimedia Commenting

I filed these under the Reflections & Revelations for Day 26
Continue reading Exploring Other Ways to Comment for Day 26…

My Favorite Comments for Day 22

Today’s task is to look for favorite comments left in the Rumination’s blog and then highlight why I LIKED the comment. I pulled quotes from several areas: clarifying, tips, corroborative & community building.

Favorite Comment Clarifying Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0

Michele’s comment helped me to clarify the differences between Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0.

Michele Martin| The Bamboo Project Blog

I think that the biggest difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is that it’s about creating community. That means people coalescing around shared interests and “talking” about those interests through blogging and commenting (including comments on things like Flickr photos and YouTube videos). Think of it as a party where some people will just sort of watch on the sidelines, taking it all in, never saying a word. Others will want to interject now and then with comments. Still others will be all over the place, interacting in a variety of ways. But all people have the option to participate when and if they want to.

It’s really very powerful, although I’ve found that people are so used to being one-way passive recipients of information (i.e., the TV model of interacting with technology), many are having difficulty making the switch to being empowered to take online action. But when everyone gets it, that will be the REAL revolution!

Favorite Tip Comments

Betty left me a great tip for using Google Docs with students. Sue passed on a good resource for me to review about Diigo.

bgilgoff | Betty Online

…another way of having students collaborate is with google docs. It also tracks history of participation but is more similar to a word document and less public than a wiki. I use it sometimes with my colleagues and have used it with grade 4/5 students. The most effective use though that I’ve seen is the way that my son uses it with other students in some of his university classes.

Sue Waters | Mobile Technology in TAFE

Most of the educators are really liking diigo. Check out Liz Davis’s screencast on Diigo — it may help you.

Favorite Corroborative Comment

Christine’s comment help me to realize that I wasn’t the only one who felt frustrated when working on online collaborative efforts.

Christine Martell | VisualsSpeak Blog

I would have loved doing my collaborative work in grad school on a wiki. It was very annoying to be the one who carried others to good grades!

Favorite Community Building Comment

Christine was one of the recipients of the creating community with other commenters award. This was her response to being an award winner.

Christine Martell | VisualsSpeak Blog

Thanks Kristi. Community is very important to me, and I actively facilitate it in the offline parts of my life, but I never felt I did it very well online. So I particularly appreciate the encouragement, and hope I can learn to do even a small part of what Sue and Michele do.

Continue reading My Favorite Comments for Day 22…

Once, Twice, Three Times Blog Skipping / Day 20 Following Links

Today’s challenge is based an idea by Dave Ferguson “Three Links Out” or “Three Clicks Out.” This challenge is designed to help find and explore new blogs.

It’s a bit like skipping stones…one, two, three skips…but doing it by visiting different blogs. Finally at the third blog the task is to leave a message.

My Blog Skipping Adventure - Take 1

First skip: I started with my own Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD Blog (since I am spending a lot of time on the site thanks to the challenge.)

Second skip: The Edublogger site run by Sue Waters and read the post on Are You Making Your Life Easier By Using A Personalized Start Page? and decided I needed to spend some more time reading this post that I’d missed.
Third skip: Visited n2teaching and left a comment on a post about Lives of Teachers: Public or Private?

I think the emergency of social networking has really changed how people interact online. Many have chosen to make things public, that perhaps should remain private.

The fact that future employers and colleges may search online for prospective employees and students can reveal all sorts of things that might not be desirable.

It will be interesting to see if people start changing what they are posting realizing that what gets posted on the Internet suddenly becomes a public and potentially permanent.

I really like the idea of a Google alert for one’s own name as a way of monitoring what is out there.

Thanks for giving me something to ruminate about for the Comment Challenge.

My Blog Skipping Adventure - Take 2

First skip: I starting at A GeekyMomma’s Blog with her post on What Posts Stimulate Readers To Comment?

Second skip: I jumped to a blog on the blog roll Blogging on the Bay, Creating a Path to Techno-Constructivist Learning in the Classroom. I noted the prominent disclaimer that I may end up including something similar on my own: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.

Third skip: I jumped to a link in the Blogroll for Diigo, another social newtorking tool that I hadn’t heard about. Instead of leaving a message, I decided to bookmark it for later review and did a quick review.

Diigo is an online community for learning people, where information, knowledge and community come together. The cool feature here is Diigo allows you to highlight portions of web pages that are of particular interest to you.

Continue reading Once, Twice, Three Times Blog Skipping / Day 20 Following Links…

Analyzing Comments on the Ruminations Blog for Day 18

The challenge for today courtesy Christy Tucker is to analyze the comments on your own blog, in particular looking at which posts generate conversations.

The idea of this challenges is that if you can determine which posts generated conversations, then you make be able to determine what made those past posts good conversation starters and incorporate those features into future posts.

I got out a magnifying glass, took a look at the comments left on the site during the 31 Day Comment Challenge and answered the suggested questions:

* Which of your posts have generated the most comments?

Most comments goes to:

9 Comments for My Edublog Diagnosis Bloquacia or Blogorrhea? / Day 7 What I’ve learned so far

7 Comments for Defining Blogging in Education - Day 3 of the Challenge

* Which has generated the best conversation? (The last question is about quantity; this one is about quality.)

In addition to generating the most comments the My Edublog Diagnosis Bloquacia or Blogorrhea? / Day 7 What I’ve learned so far post also generated the best conversation. Commenters got into a debate about how long comments should be

I ended up developing new terms Postorrhea and Postquacious

So Postorrhea would be an overflow of rather useless posts and comments.

and

Postquacious would be the long posts that perhaps should be new comments.

* Are there any patterns to the commenting on your own blog?

It is hard to say if there are any patterns, since all of the comments have been a part of the Comment Challenge. It does seem that people were more apt to be commenting in the first week and a half and now that the challenge is over the half way point, comments are dwindling.

* Do certain types of posts generate more comments than others?

It seems that more interesting or even quirky the title, the more likely that someone will be commenting.

* If you do see a pattern or commonality between posts that generate good comments, what can you do to increase those qualities in other posts?

Post that Generate good comments, this is a hard one to determine and one that I’ll have to look at over time as the blog progresses.

I can never seem to figure out which of the lenses that I develop for Squidoo will generated comments, or which of the blog posts on the My Green Doc Blog would generate comments as part of the Mom Blog Party.

Continue reading Analyzing Comments on the Ruminations Blog for Day 18…

Adjusting to Comments / Day 11 Write a Blog Comment Policy

When I first took a look at the topics, I wasn’t sure what a Blog Comment Policy was. I haven’t had to worry too much about blog commentors prior to the Challenge, other than the blog spammers.

A realized that in creating or developing a Blog Policy it may vary significantly depending on the blog, the target audience and the number of responders.

With our website, Journey of Hearts, I have a disclaimer on the site:

Information on this site is designed to support, not replace, an existing physician-patient, provider-patient relationship. We regret that we are unable to answer any specific medical, mental or health related emails. Please contact your health care provider if you need specific questions answered.

Since I am blogging from the perspective of an Instructor, rather than a physician, I do not think I have to worry as much about including a medical disclaimer on an educational blog. I do wonder if I need to post a disclaimer that the ideas are my own and not reflective of the institutions where I am teaching.

I did like the information from Lorelle VanFossen from the BlogHearald on “Does Your Blog Have A Comments Policy?” regarding the rights of the blog owner.

1. Control over content and comments.

2. Ability to edit comments.

3. Ability to censor comments.

4. Ability to delete comments.

5. Ability to prevent comments by specific persons or groups.

I do feel that I should be able to delete inappropriate and/or offensive comments.
After thinking this challenge over for a couple of days and reading through the list of recommended resources, I decided that this will go on the “To Do” list for the blog to be completed after the challenge. I need to do a bit more research before developing a final Commenter policy.

Continue reading Adjusting to Comments / Day 11 Write a Blog Comment Policy…