Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

Yesterday I attended a very nice pre-conference workshop here at Online Educa Berlin on Web 2.0 and social software. It was given by two profs from Italy (Sarah Gut and Susanna Sancassenni) that explained in a very clear was what they were doing with their students. It is interesting to see how even Flickr photo annotations can be used for language learning, just as wiki's, personal blogs, diigo annotations, etc. During the workshop we were also asked to work out a learning event that uses web 2.0 principles and tools. The project we came up with at our table is actually something I believe in would really work: an intra-company learning community with a common goal to become good at presenting. (There are so many bad presenters, also here at the conference.) I have to find back the photo they made of our project, but from the top of my head it included:
- social network site to make a profile (Ning for example)
- a plan to become good at learning and share it (wiki/blog)
- finding learning resources and experts (links to YouTube, courses,etc)
- sharing your experiences in learning blogs
- ask a question (how do I deal with this difficult audience tomorrow?)
- using Google Docs or similar to collaborate on presentation design
- using Slideshare.com to prepare and get feedback on the presentation delivery
- recorded teleconf calls to exercise Q&A

It was an interesting workshop, especially because it opened my eyes on what is really, really happening in universities right now. Oh boy, we from the corporate learning function have no idea what is heading to us in 2-3 years time. That is another reason for me being here: this is the only conference where corporate learning professionals can preview the learning that Nextgen youngsters get right now and will expect to get from us when they enter the workforce.

Labels: online educa, web2.0

The development site about3findout.com is 6 weeks old, and already got its third major user interface redesign. This time I tried to apply the most common principles of web 2.0 interfaces. Hope you like it and find it easier and more intuitive to navigate. It's still not done completely, but hey, it's 2.0 so perpetual beta :-) .

In this article I want to point you to the various places on the Internet that helped me to reshape the site.

First of all I redefined the color schemes for the site. I still have four separate color coded zones Quiz zone, Author zone, Club zone and Help zone. But the very bright and painful pink and green colors have been replaced. I went from a 3-color scheme to a 2-color scheme. For every zone there is one color 'letter' for the characters, and one softer color 'lightshade' for the background. There are a lot of color sites out there on the mighty Internet, and these were most helpful to me:

• The color toolbox lists useful sites that will learn you about colors on the web
• Color combos: this is the site I used to get matching color pairs in pink, blue, green and yellow. You can create and share color palettes on this site. Nice initiative.

The next site that helped me a lot was the 'Web 2.0 How-do-design Guide' on webdesignfromscratch.com. It inspired me into applying the following design principles:

• Simplicity: (As good as it gets - don't think users won't find their way and clutter the screen with useless information)
• Central design: My previous interface could scale across the screen. This one has a fixed body of 800 pixels so it should fit on 800*600 screens. Larger screens will have white margins.
• Two columns: one main body and one navigation and command column on the right
• Separate and clearly visible top section: I now have a big black belt on top so the body stands out from the header. The logo is always 'in your face'.
• Navigation: clear navigation sections in the colored boxes on the right.
• Big text: average font sizes have increased on the Internet since web 2.0
• And then things like the 'beta' star, the rounded corners, the gradient backgrounds,...

And luckily these days you don't need to be a graphical artist yourself to create nice logo's, boxes, gradients, backgrounds or tabs. All that is available for free on the net. Here is what I used and recommend:

• Tabsgenerator.com : nice site to generate tabs in various formats and colors
• Stripegenerator.com : from the same makers as tabsgenerator.com, this site lets you very easily create the o so popular striped backgrounds
• Web20badges.com : didn't use them yet, but if I ever need a badge or 'new' star sign, this is the place to get it
• LogoCreatr : the web 2.0 logo was created with the logo creatr. There is another popular logo creator site here, but I found the logocreatr better because it allows for multiple designs and more configuration options such as colors, size and transparency.

Labels: about2findout, design, interface, web2.0

At work we have an innovation team, and they gave a presentation on web 2.0 some months ago. Their handout was this mindmap which I find excellent. With one look it covers key aspects. I'm publishing it here with kind permission of Michel, Simon and Ralph. Thanks guys!

(It's made with an evaluation version of MindManager - click on the picture to enlarge).

Labels: mindmaps, web2.0

Web 2.0 is the web's new evolution. Or it's technology. Or it's just a catchy buzz word. Or it's hype. I don't care if it's one or all of them, to me there is something different about the internet than when I got to know it back in university, and I like it, I want to find out what it is and I want to be part of it.

So what is it? You can find out on wikipedia. And Dion Hinchcliffe lists the year's best web 2.0 explanations on his blog. Some folks hate the term, others already speak of web 3.0. I'll give you one definition:

Web 2.0 is a term that captures the widespread sense that there's something
qualitatively different about today's web. - TIm O'Reilly

Some characteristcs (in my humble point of view):
xevolution is the use of collective intelligence (the wisdom of crowds)

• social factor is more imporant than the technology, it's about people this time ; one interesting
• continuous improvements leading to perpetual beta instead of release cycles
• open, sites expose their services through API's so that other sites can include them - these composite applications are called mashups
• richer browser experience (mainly because of AJAX technology)
• the web is the platform
• simple - lightweight programming, basic services, easy to use
• user controls the data, not the site owner
• mostly free or low cost, based on advertising revenue - many make losses

Popular web 2.0 sites include myspace, facebook, friendster, secondlife, flickr, google, blogger, del.icio.us, technorati, feedburner, wordpress, youtube, wikipedia, linkedin, craigslist, etc. I'll be reviewing a lot of them in the coming time. Stay tuned on my discoveries :-).

Labels: web2.0