Congratulations! You have made it to the introductory page of
Web 2.0: Introduction to Web Second Generation Web Tools.
The Tucker Medical Library staff is pleased to bring you this 8 week online course. No prior knowledge of Web 2.0 technologies is required. This class provides a hands-on introduction to 2.0 tools as well as discussions with your colleagues about the benefits and challenges of Web 2.0 as related to medicine and research and the management thereof. This online class will require 1-2 hours/week of work. Content will include background readings, discovery exercises (along the lines of ‘try this tool out’), and a discussion blog.
The staff extend a special thanks to the Medical Library Association‘s Social Networking Task Force for providing content for this course.
You will learn about:
- Blogging and RSS
- Wikis
- Social networking
- Social bookmarking and tagging
- Web office tools
- Photo sharing
- Online hosted video and podcasts
- Mashups
Instructions
Course format:
Every Friday a new set of guidelines will be posted to the course blog for the following week. You are reading the course blog now. Since the course is self-discovery these will not be step-by-step instructions, rather they are task based instructions. Never fear – the instructions will include discovery reading and tutorials to help you complete the exercises. We encourage you to ask questions of the library staff and your fellow students.
Posting your work:
In the first week you will create a blog. To help us track your participation, each week you will be required to post a blog entry (to the blog you create in week 1 ) in response to a question posed to you. After posting your blog entry you will submit this information through our activity tracking report. Why report activity? We want to know that people are taking the course! To encourage you to report, everyone who reports all eight weeks by the deadline will receive a 256 Flash Drive.
The listserv and course blog:
We have created a email listserv to help us communicate with the course participants. Since this is a Web 2.0 course we ask that you don’t use the listserv for discussion, rather please use the course blog.
Making up work:
One of the benefits of this course is to encourage discussion and participation between National Jewish staff, so we encourage all participants to complete the weeks in the prescribed time frame. That being said, you can makeup work if you miss a week by completing the exercises and submitting the tracking form even though the week has passed. Remember, all material must be completed two weeks after the end of the course, with a final deadline of August 31, 2008.
Technical Requirements:
The technical requirements for the course are minimal. Most Web Browsers (Firefox 1.1+, Internet Explorer 5.0+, or Safari 1.0+) will work without any issues. Some of the exercises use You Tube videos to introduce concepts and reinforce materials. If you are unable to view You Tube videos, you will be asked to update your version of Flash. Please consult your technical person or see this link for more information.
Help:
At some point you will probably find that you have a question. There is a link on the right hand side of the blog, “Ask for Help”. Clicking on this link will take you to a post where you can ask a question. Please remember to check back for answers.
Tags: instructions, introduction, welcome
