User:Chrisr99

Web two Review:

Part theory part practice with Phil Bradley in the controls. Or rather, as we learned, not really at the controls as with Web Two no one is. In a nutshell he seemed to be suggesting that whatever name this latest evolution of the interweb goes under it is powerful and revolutionary and as likely to change the way we -as people, workers, consumers- behave as much as Internet itself has over the past decade. In other words this is a very big change and we can't swerve it.

On the patting selves on head front we, at Lambeth Learning Resources, aren't doing too badly in terms of embracing the technology but there will be trouble ahead for Mr Hill and others who cling to older more rigid network solutions. Mr Bradley sees this an good for librarians who more than ever will be needed to evaluate information in the electronic environment and should be leading the develpments of VLEs. Then again he would say that wouldn't he?

So the morning session was theoretical outlining the way in which web 2 will alter our way of working and those interersted in more information on Phil's theories of web development should go to his site (http://www.philb.com) and browse about. As with all these things there were some interesting new terms including "the cloud" to describe the Internet as a platform. Everything on the cloud, nothing outside the cloud and nothing against the cloud. The basic idea is that there is no need for downloaded software or storage facilities because everything can be held online and this obviously removes the need for software and, ahem, less for IT technicians to install it.

Over to you Bruce and Gloria

Bruce's bit:

To be a little more particular, Phil went into some detail about elements of Web 2.0, such as wikis (and here we are), blogs and tweets (about which he was especially enthusiastic, although the joys of articulating every passing thought whilst sat on the bog largely escape me), as well as many of the social networking sites that we are probably more familiar with.

Cloud computing hasn't really been embraced by our institution yet, although e-mails are, apparently stored on an outside server, so careful what you write! We, like many institutions, are still enslaved by Microsoft ('the big blue screen of death'), but there's nothing to stop staff or students using alternatives like Google apps instead of Office.

The practical sessions were a bit of a curate's egg for me, as I kept going round in circles with Netvibes, and registering with Twitter resulted in an immediate flurry of spam; I did manage to post a blog, which has, at the last count, been viewed by exactly 0 people.

Chris briefly mentioned the need to evaluate online information, and this, for me, is the crux of the matter: there's an awful lot of stuff out there, much of it rubbish, and it can be very difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Phil Bradley himself has said he would always trust Britannica over Wikipedia, so it seems that if you want reliable, peer-assessed and accredited information, you've got to pay for it.