http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w609164/eq/mypeople.html

Slideshare is a new service which allows users upload PowerPoint or Open Office presentation files and share them online through a You Tube-like interface.

Power Point documents stored on the web with a permanent URL are a valuable resource. In this way, users do not have to send others the PP files through email to share with them. Users can easily to upload the PowerPoint to the slideshare.com and send the URL to the people they want to share with. Another advantage of Slideshare is that it can help user to protect with the copyright issue.

I upload my PowerPoint about the Web 2.0 and it looks good: http://www.slideshare.net/houbinfang/web20-363975

When I saw the VoiceThread at the first time I did not realize it is related to education. I think we can use it for display ourselves – self introduction with pictures and family introduction with music and narration. I created one to introduce the snow disaster in China, 2007. That snow storm happed in the winter which is also the time for the biggest traditional holidays in China – Spring Festival. At that holiday, no mater where you are and what you are doing, almost all the Chinese will choose to go home to visit relatives and friends. That means thousands of people need to travel. However, the railways, high ways and airports had to be closed because of the snow which had never happened in 50 years. All the people in China tried to help and I was moved by many pictures from internet, so I chose this as topic of my first voice thread: http://voicethread.com/#u93815

            In fact, I think the Voicethread can do better as a platform perfect for distance learning because of the way it made asynchronous feel synchronous via capturing and conveying the complexities of the human voice. Teachers can record their voice with pictures to demonstrate step by step of a process of a experiment. Students may have a better understanding with viewing this.

            Voicethread is not a movie maker and it is focus on the explaining function. Comparing it with slide show, we believe that the voicethread can do a better job for education.

               Ning is free tool online and offers users a place to communicate. It can be used to deliver a course, build an online community, and also can be used for the purpose of sharing good resources or information. Ning offers the latest social networking features, all infinitely customizable to meet your unique needs. In Ning, users can have the freedom to create their own social network for anything. Get on Ning, We can see that the content in Ning includes all kinds of areas: from artists to musicians, athletes, bloggers, video channels, journalists, students, educators, parents, craft hobbyists, alumni, and interest groups, the range and diversity of the social networks on Ning are profound. It is because that Ning is a open source for everyone in the world and allow all the users to contribute to it, it can include so wide content.  

Thin Ning I created for this class is about the Web 2.0 in education: http://web2education.ning.com/. It was amazing that I can create it in so short time – one hour. The content is from my term paper and I also added video and audio into my Ning. This is really a good experience and I am planning to do more in the future.

Before this assignment I only know that podcasting is a term inspired by the Apple Computer Corporation’s iPod. I have no idea about RSS feed. I get to know both podcasting and RSS through this assignment.

First, I use the audacity to create an episode of audio and exported in map3 format. The audio is about the Beijing opera and I also recorded my own voce to introduce listeners about this opera.

Second, upload the mp3 into the students sever on campus. And through this I got a URL of the mp3.

Third, I subscribed the mp3 URL into the RSS feed and upload the RSS to the students sever too.

 Post the URL of the RSS feed and we can get the podcasting. Of course, we can also subscribe the RSS feed into the iTune and listen that in iTune or download it into iPod for the offline listening.

Podcasting holds a lot of potential in education. Students can not only record and listen to instructors materials, but also can record their own voices and publish it to the world. This is totally different from the traditional presentation, so students to create an instructional audio or step-by-step tutorial and publish it as a podcast to share with their fellows. This is also a way of communication and a process of learning. 

Here is my assignment: http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w609164/podcast/podcast_houbin1.xml

As we all know that Wiki is a simple web authoring tool. Each Wiki page contains an edit button. So users can add, delete or edit all the contents in any pages. Upon saving, the modified page is stored. In most Wiki systems, there are no access restrictions to the use of the edit button: users browsing through a Wiki system are encouraged to add or modify contents whenever they feel the desire to do so.

Now, I know at least two tools for creating Wiki: Wetpaint and Wikispeace. Two Wikis that I created are: http://understandweb20.wikispaces.com/ and http://shenettab.wetpaint.com/

One is about multimedia in education and the other one is about Web 2.0 in education. I like the multimedia in education Wiki better. That is a group work and I created with another classmate. Whenever, we have something need to contribute to the Wiki or have a different idea with each other, we can communicate with each other through Wiki. Furthermore, each of us can find when and which part of the Wiki was edited by the other. We can make changes and also edit it. Group work is an important function of Wiki. This makes Wiki more powerful. Another example is the most widely used Wiki named Wikipedia which is a popular success model which has demonstrated that Wiki is a tool to facilitate group work.

Wiki is an important tool in education nowadays. It allows students and teachers work together. As we did in my multimedia wiki that students and instructors can built on each other’s work and create resources in a genuinely collaborative way. Students can learn through this way and make study fun!