Let’s look at the SOCIAL part of social bookmarking.

First – a humorous story.  I was presenting at a conference and my handout was a one pager with only my social bookmarking address.  It just so happens that I often use the name of ‘Frank Ferter’ in many examples and sites.  It wan’t until then that someone pointed out how funny it looked: http://delicious.com/frankferter

If you go to my bookmarks, you will find everything that I have added (except for the ones I have made private).

By looking at my bookmarks, you will be able to tell what my interests are.  Why is that significant?  Because if we are interested in the same things, it might be a good idea to continue to explore what I have because you will most likely find something useful for yourself.

Example.  If I was a web designer and interested in color schemes I would do a search for that on Delicious and find that one of the links a lot of people have bookmarked was “COLOURlovers.”

Over on the right I would also notice that there were over 38,ooo people who have bookmarked this site.  ”Hmmmmm,” methinks.  ”Maybe that is a good resource for me to check out if 38,000+ people have bookmarked it.”

After I click on the link and find that, yes, it is very valuable, I bookmark it myself.  Then, methinks again, “I wonder what other bookmarks these 38,000 people know that I don’t know about.”   I click on the number to see who has bookmarked it.

I find a chronological list of those people who have bookmarked it and with which tags they have used.  This gives me two resources: 1) a list of similar people and 2) a list of tags which might open my learning exponentially.

This gives me a list of both people and the tags with which they bookmarked this site.  When I see someone that has tagged it with ‘color’ and ‘webdesign’  - I can bet they will have other bookmarks I will be interested in.

From there, your discovery of information, your learning becomes unlimited and takes off.

There are other solutions and variants of this, but to keep it simple, this is as far as I will go.

TO DO – Use it.  (Difficulty Level: EASY )

• Set up Delicious on each computer you own.
• Start using it for all of your bookmarking needs
• Start using it for your

Now that you are signed up, let’s figure out how to use this.  Let’s talk about value, following and how to tweet.

VALUE

One of the first things you might notice as you log on to your home page is that it displays the number of people you follow and the number of followers you have.

First and foremost you must understand this principle: The value of Twitter comes in the number and quality of people you follow, not in the number who follow you. Why? In the end, Twitter is about learning.  And here is my theory:

The opening question, “What’s Happening?” or “What are you doing” make very shallow conversations – on or off line.  But if I were to share with you some bit of interesting information – that’s were things could get interesting and a real conversation can take place.  But for that to happen, the information I share should be something you are interested in.  If I tweet, “interesting diagram on intentionality & formality in learning http://is.gd/5n2ar via @csessums” as did @hjarche yesterday, and I was interested in the learning profession, that would be something I would want to check out. (As you can see, it is who you follow that gives you the most value.)

So, Twitter is turning into a medium allowing professionals or other like minded individuals on a topic to share useful information.  This is why the highest demographic of users is between 18-35 (47% of users).  1) They are starting their professions and have a lot to share and 2) they latch on to technological solutions faster than those who are older.  BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  The second largest demographic is between 35-49 (31%) and then the next is 50+ (21%)!  And of all Twitter users, 63% have a college degree.  Where are the teens?  They are last at 1% – why?  Texting 1:1 is most important to them.  As they enter the workforce, connections and communicating, 1:many becomes much more important.  So I am not surprised with the change in stats.  Teens are not joining yet only because they don’t ‘get it’ and they don’t need it.

That’s my theory, anyway.

FOLLOWING

Remember – value comes in who you follow.  Go to my Twitter home page (make sure you are logged in).  If what you read you find interesting, follow me.  If not, skip me.

To find others you might want to follow, go to Twitter’s search engine and search a keyword.  “Learing” or “e.20″ or “Social media” or “NASA” or whatever you are interested in.  Find out who is saying what about these topics.

Then click on the name of a person you think you might want to follow.  On their Twitter home page (make sure you are already logged in) click on the FOLLOW button under their picture.  Now, on the right are pictures of people they follow.  Go exploring.  Click on someone. See if they are worth following, if so, do so.

As we go on, you will get the hang of who to follow.

HOW TO TWEET

True, you can tweet from the Twitter page.  But oddly enough, most people don’t.  Why? To read your friend’s tweets or to tweet yourself, you have to open a browser, go to the page and do it there.  It may seem like a no brainer, but it is actually a pain.

Instead, you can download a small program that will keep Twitter open all the time (Tweetie for my Mac is my favorite).  This makes a BIG difference in how and why and when you would use it.  When you do have time, you can look at it or you can quickly tweet.  Another option is to put it on your iPhone or Blackberry.

But, whatever you do, don’t rely on the Twitter home page.  Just don’t do it.

TO DO – Set Yourself Up!  (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: ???? Depends on you)

Do all the actions I mention above.

• Find followers
• Download a twitter app to your desktop and phone (if you can).

Tomorrow we will talk about Tweeting and sharing and what @ & # & DM & RT mean, and why they are important.

(Warning – this is a longer post – but it is worth it.  I promise.  It makes the case as to why we should use social networking sites not only inside of organizations, but also why we should not block employees from accessing outside sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.)

Before we get to the topic of using Facebook and LinkedIn at work, I want to tell a story which was prompted by the comment yesterday from @LisaMeece108.  Hopefully this will give you one example of the many benefits of these social networking sites.

When I first joined Facebook I also joined my high school’s graduating class Group that one of my old classmates created.  From that point on, I felt I was inundated with friend requests.  Some were old friends I had lost contact with and I was excited I knew where they were.  Others, to be honest, I barely remember or had not even thought about since the “good ol’ days.” If I accepted their friend requests, their updates started showing up in my “stream.”  I started learning a lot about people I really didn’t know any more and I was skeptical about the value of these updates.

Fast forward to my beautiful cousin’s wedding.  We were living in Portland at the time and she was living in the area of our home town, a couple hours south.  At her wedding there were a number of people she worked with who came that I had graduated with – AND, I was ‘friends’ with on Facebook.

One particular person was Janice.  In high school we didn’t hang out together.  We knew each other and would talk every now and then, but we didn’t know each other very well at all.  She was a great person, we just hung around in different social circles.

When we met again for the first time in 20 years, we started off as if we were great friends.  We immediately launched into our families and the activities we are in – all because we saw each others’ updates and had a background – in reality, we were just picking up where we left off on Facebook.  Our visit skipped past the awkward “Hi, remember me from 20 years ago?” stage where we would have even less to talk about than we did in high school.  Instead, it was a very pleasant experience.  For me, it was very eye opening as to the potential power of  social networking.

Now, on to FB/LinkedIn at work…

It is my plight, but one that I willingly accept.  Most of my professional career has been spent alone.  I was hired by companies to do something that no one else in the company could do.  It was me and me alone who performed these functions as I evangelicize (is that word?), educate, try to get others to help me and take up the cause for which I have been hired.  There were not any peers to work with and bounce ideas off of. My learning and growth was limited to my personal education.  Although I feel I was good at what I did and knew more about it than anyone in the company, it was as if they were held hostage by my limited knowledge and skills.  Honestly, I felt badly, but could only give them what I knew, products of learning and experience, knowing that if I only knew more I could take them further.  “If only I had a team” I would cry to myself, “then we could learn from one another, bounce ideas back and forth and go beyond my limited nature.”

For this reason I became very active in different local associations of similar people.  From them I was able to learn new techniques, perspectives and skills.  Yet, this was still very limiting.  At most we only met once a month for about an hour.

Then came online social networking…

No longer did I need to wait until our monthly meeting.  NAY! I could throw away the shackles of time and geographic location!  Now, if I need to ask a question, I can now do it immediately, when I am in the moment working on that specific task.

For example, I am joined to a great group of peers through social networking – the E2.0 Adoption Council. None of them work at NASA.  They all work at different companies, yet we all do the same thing – we help large organizations (10K people +) implement what is termed “Enterprise 2.0.”  We are connected by a social networking site and by Yammer (which we will talk about next week).  If I have a question, I can post it to one of these places and get several answers and join in on great dialogue.  Their perspectives are unique and invaluable. And when they ask questions, I am there to share my experiences and thoughts, helping them. We don’t share confidential or proprietary information – they are all professionals.  If this network were blocked it would be to the detriment of the organization I am working for.

Even if I did have a team*, just think: I could be connected to tens, hundreds, even thousands of ‘peers’ with an infinite amount of experience is a FREE benefit to me and the organization.  I would have to be CRAZY to not allow my team to tap these resources.  Then why do some organizations?

Fear.  Fear that it will be abused.  Fear that employees will 1) waste time and 2) post inappropriate or confidential information in an open space.

You only have to go as far as the back of the cover jacket of the book Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee, the originator of the term and a leading expert and researcher of organizational use of these tools.  It says that the book will “reveal where the real risks and roadblocks are with Enterprise 2.0, and why most concerns are unfounded.”  Inside the book he states, “I have noticed an interesting pattern: before an organization begins an  Enterprise 2.0 effort, its leaders typically have a consistent set of concerns about the negative things that could happen.  But most of these issues are not real or serious risks… After an organization begins to deploy (E2.0), its leaders’ concerns often shift to one simple issue: How can we go faster” (p.145)?  Later he writes how he tries to collect horror stories of these fears incarnate, but  “…my collection is almost empty. I have yet to come across any true horror stories – scenarios that make me question whether the risks associated with deploying (E2.0) actually do outweigh the benefits” (p.146).  (BTW – go buy the book. Now.)

Is your organization not networking from within?  Why not?  If it is not, it is limiting the ability for employees to be more effective through networking.

To be fair, Facebook is not an E2.0 application.  E2.0 refers to using these tools inside organizations.  Yet we have to ask: Have employees put out information on Facebook that they should not have? Yes.  Does it happen often.  No.  Does the risk outweigh the potential benefit? Not even close. What is the stepping stone?  Simply: TRUST.  If you have it, you are on your way.  If you don’t, you won’t see these tools any time soon.

I could never be as effective as I am without this E2.0 group.  Period and without question.  There are a ton of professional Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn which bring together people who do what you do, who support each other.  Join one or two or three or more. Do more than join – get engaged in them.

If you are blessed enough to work for an organization which does not block Facebook or LinkedIn, take advantage of it to connect to peers – learn from them, share with them and become a more valuable employee.

* In reality, I do have a great team. But this team is not dedicated to my field of work.  They have their own responsibilities and E2.0 is only a part of what they do.  They have not done this before, and so they are learning and doing at the same time – and doing very well, I might add!

STATUS UPDATES

A couple days ago I was in a meeting where a person said, ” I just don’t see the value of Facebook.  I mean, seriously.  I don’t care that someone ‘is waking up with a cup of coffee’ or is ‘slowly recovering from yesterday’s surgery.’  What a waste of time.”  He then grabbed someone’s iPhone with the Facebook app running and started reading off the updates.  I must admit, some of them did sound silly.  But let me give you a simple example of how something so mundane and initially inconsequential can help.

Photo by paulcole on Flickr

Every year our church likes to book a camping area for everyone to go camping together.  It just so happened that I was flying in that Friday night and was going to make it just in time to leave with the family.  But the last leg of my flight was delayed.  I called my wife and let her know, then I jumped on Facebook and updated my status: “Flight is delayed.  Can’t wait to see the fam after two weeks away and go camping. Hopefully I will be there in time to meet them.”

When my wife arrived at the campsite she suddenly had a number of people helping her out to set up the tent and get everything ready for her and the seven kids.  Why?  They saw the update, knew I would not be there with them and pitched in to help.  She kept hearing, “I heard Kevin will be late.” How was that, my non-Facebook using wife thought?  Did he call everyone?  No, it was the Facebook status.

The other day I found out that my friend’ wife was coming home from the hospital after delivering a baby.  Since we now live 2500 apart , I had not heard about the birth, and probably would not have until his wife was somewhat back to normal.  But I found out early, thankfully!

Then, last week, I had an business acquaintance message me through LinkedIn.  We have talked numerous times and had lunch together once.  He is a great guy and I have been impressed with his work.  Unfortunately, work is something he didn’t have any more and he let me know through LinkedIn.  Now, I can have my eyes open for him.

Can the updates be abused?  Sure, and some people are better at doing that than others.  But other times, those small, seemingly insignificant updates can make a big difference.

GROUPS

Facebook and LinkedIn both have GROUPS which you can join (without giving away private information about yourself).  Once in, there is usually a discussion on that topic.  The Groups can be organized around causes, ideas, conspiracy theories, music artists, professional initiatives or goofy topics.  Just about whatever you can think of, personal or professional, there will be a group for you to join.  Some groups are VERY useful – sharing information and asking/answering questions.  It becomes another set of people who have common passions to collaborate and connect with.

TO DO – Join some groups (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 15- minutes total)

• Go to both Facebook and LinkedIn and search groups for your favorite causes and professional interests.
• Join them and jump in on the conversations!

Now that you are on, let’s get you connected.

Photo by dan taylor on Flickr

FRIENDS in ‘real life’ are not the same as friends online.  In face-to-face relationships there is a certain etiquette with friends. Online, there is a totally different etiquette with friends. We won’t go over all the nuances, just know that it is OK to have thousands of friends on an online network and never really ‘speak’ to any of them.

Then why have them?

When you need them, they will be there.  For example, let’s say you find a past coworker from 10 years ago on LinkedIn and connect to them.  Next month, suddenly, you are laid off.  What is the best way to find a job? Through networking.  Suddenly, you have a MUCH larger network to contact and that past coworker is no longer a distant memory, but a valuable resource.

Or, let’s say that you were involved with a volunteer music production group.  In time you quit, moved across the country and life moved on – but you were friends with this group on Facebook.  Five years later you get the itch and want to start up a similar production group in your new town.  Even though you did not stay in touch via mail or even email very well, not only do you know where to find this group, but you can instantly contact them to get advice.

TO DO – Get thee some Friends! (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 20- minutes total)

According to your initial strategy,

1. Spend at least 10 minutes on each of the social networks and connect to, or friend current or past friends, family members or co-workers.
2. Take a look at who they are following. This may give you some ideas of who to connect with who you may have forgotten.

Week 5: Facebook/LinkedIn: Day 1

Photo by Tim in Sydney on Flickr

As physical entities, we can only be in one place at one time.  We only have 24 hours in a day. Because of these two facts, our “reach” is limited.  “Reach” can be defined as our potential sphere of influence.  If we have three meetings, back to back, we have to remember the travel time between each one, the customary introduction and exit rituals will each take time, and that switching from one group to another is not always easy.  (And remember, each of these meetings must fit everyone’s schedule, so even the availability for these meetings is diminished.) Because of this limited reach we are not able to be in contact with those people whom we might value the most – family, friends and colleagues – as often as we might like.  We often also have to whittle out some groups altogether – even though they may be valuable – because of this limited reach.

Yet, what if we were not bound by our physical bodies, nor time?  What would happen to this reach – this potential sphere of influence?  What kind of influence could we have if we were able to stay in contact with thousands of people?  What could we accomplish if we could join meetings or groups when it was convenient for us?

Social Computing allows us to do this.  There are many services on the internet that help us extend our reach.  This week we will only talk about Facebook and LinkedIn.  Previously considered by many to be time wasters for college students, these two services are powerful networking mediums.

Many have totally stayed away from these two (and other similar) services because of either their preconceived ideas or ‘horror stories’ they have heard.  Yet the question most people want to know is, “Is Facebook / LinkedIn a waste of my time or are they actually good for something?”  To know the answer, we must ask, “What do you want to do?”  Unfortunately, this is most often a chicken & egg situation.  We don’t know what is possible until we try it.

Before we move any further, we should understand, at least on a basic level, the value of ‘Social Networking.’  And who better to help us out than our friends at Common Craft.

Suddenly, our network (or ‘reach’ or ‘sphere of influence’) becomes much larger and can be managed at our convenience.

Social Networking Advantages:

• Infinitely more resources
• Easily contact
• 1000’s of loose connections yet…
• Very small maintenance time
• Searchable
• Learning increases

TO DO – Sign up for Facebook & LinkedIn (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 15- minutes total)

If you are hesitent at all, trust me on this one.  If, in the end after you have signed up and still don’t want to do it, you can cancel your accounts and be free and clear.  But I don’t think that will happen – just a guess

1. Go to Facebook and sign up (found on the front page).
2. Go to LinkedIn and sign up (also found on the front page).
3. For each of these, fill out your profiles – information about yourself.  Upload a picture.
4. Stop – don’t go further at this point.  Resist the temptation to sign up for groups or look for people.  Tomorrow we will talk about what to do next and how.  Because, yes, there is a strategy.

Week 4: Wikis: Day 4

Wiki, Blog, “social,” even RSS can be four letter words and leave a bad taste in the mouth.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people shutter at the very mention of any of these.  Yet their bad raps are a form a pre-judgement derived (often times) from a single bad encounter which they project upon the subject as a whole.

“People have been character smeered on Wikipedia.”

“Schools won’t let their students cite Wikipedia because it is so often wrong.”

“If anyone can post anything on Wikipedia,  it must be incorrect.”

There is some truth to these statements.  Yet, as Sandra Ordonez, a spokeswoman from Wikipedia, has said in an email interview,

“Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic, however, it is not an authoritative source. In fact, we recommend that students check the facts they find in Wikipedia against other sources. Additionally, it is generally good research practice to cite an original source when writing a paper, or completing an exam. It’s usually not advisable, particularly at the university level, to cite an encyclopedia.”

Sound advice.

Yet the prejudice does not stop there.  They assume that if Wikipedia can be abused, “certainly a wiki in the workplace will be abused.”  Not so fast.  Change the circumstances and you change the outcome.

How can Intel create a wiki, amass tens of thousands of pages of information, have millions of page views yet have relatively no abuse?  Again, the context has changed.

When we use wikis inside an organization there isn’t any hiding.  If you abuse, your name is all over it.  No one wants to be ‘that person’ so we all understand that civility rules.  It is either that or your job.  I’d take the former.

Also, what about bad information? To that I say, open your wallet or purse or daytimer.  Look inside.  Do you see anything (expired cards, notes, old auto insurance cards) that are out of date or old information?  I decided to look in my wallet – which I like to keep lean and to a minimum size – and found five pieces of such bad/old information.  If we don’t keep our own personal wallets up to tip-top shape, why are we faulting something that could involve hundreds or even thousands of people?

Very often, however wikis are for a very specific purpose.  A meeting, or documentation or for project collaboration.  Specific people are constantly using those pages and if there is anything incorrect or out of date, they often change it.

Because of the change of venue and those involved, wikis become highly useful.  Realistically, do pages get out of date?  You bet.  But, like the note in my wallet, if it is out of date and not useful anymore, it is ignored.  And that is OK.  It isn’t needed so whether it is up to date or out of date doesn’t matter to me.

I could go on and on about negative stigmas.  But until you try wikis you may not understand.  Kind of like watching someone ride a bike.  Someone who has never seen one before might ask, “How do they stay up!  That is impossible.”  Sure, it is VERY difficult if you are standing still.  But if you change the context, the circumstances, and ad motion to it, it all of the sudden makes sense.

To Do: In the comments, tell us how you have used a wiki.

Week 4: Wikis: Day 3

Photo by SashaW on Flickr

Before we jump in to the exercise, let’s talk privacy.  There is some information you obviously don’t want open to the public – from a work or personal standpoint.  To help with this, wikis usually have a privacy setting.  The Wetpaint wiki allows you to keep your pages private but allow others to approve specific others to collaborate.  This way you have full control over who sees and edits the information.  This is perfect for work or close knit subjects.  But, just because you put it out there for others to use does NOT mean that they will.

One of the biggest impediments to the usage of any of these tools that I found early on was duplication.  You MUST replace what they have been doing with what they can do.  For example, right now I am trying out a proof of concept as a replacement for a traditional mode of communicating.  There are two types of people who are in this proof of concept.  Those who have abandoned the old way of this particular type of communication and embraced the new way, and those who are trying to do both.  Of those in the latter category, this new way is not being adopted – they aren’t using it.  It is seen as “one more thing to do” and no one has time for that.  The key: REPLACE.  And be explicit about it.  For more information, read my series on adoption.

TO DO – Start a wiki document (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 10- minutes)

• Choose a topic from your brainstorming and start your wiki.
• If you want to keep it private, change the settings.
• Send an email to those who you want to take part in the wiki.  Tell them NOT to email you details but that all communication about this subject is on the wiki.
• Use your RSS reader to watch the feed and see when others update it.

Week 4: Wikis: Day 2

Some things are beautiful because they are easy to use the first time and don’t need much of an explanation, if any at all.  It has always made me laugh that instructions are printed on a bottle of shampoo.  Understandable, but  still…  Other products are just too over the top, or way too complicated to understand.

Wikis are simple: Click edit. Modify. Click Save. Done.

Photo by kristin wolff on Flickr

When a product is so easy to use, its adoption increases (see this post on Complexity and adoption).  If we combine these together – ease of use and high adoption – something extraordinary happens: Unintended uses.  We think, “Well, if I can use it in this instance, I bet I could also use it here, and here, and here…”

There are many list of how wikis can be used.  In fact, many times it changes the norm.  For example, I was in a meeting where they were redesigning a web site.  They said they wanted an FAQ page (which, interestingly, seems to have its internet roots from NASA). But, there has been a long standing problem with FAQ web pages.  Usually, only one person can add to it because of the complexity of editing a web page and soon it gets out of date.  Why not create a wiki page that will allow you and others to update it?  When you or they see an FAQ, add it to the page.

Or what about the endless meeting agendas and followup notes.  An agenda is emailed to the attendees before the meeting, then a recap of what happened is emailed after.  What if you want to find something that happened a few months ago.  Finding it can be difficult – did you delete it or file it, and in which folder?  But if it was in a wiki, the agenda and results could be one, and last week’s meeting could be on top of the other.  Also, if you have an update or an agenda item you want covered, anyone on the attendee list can add it.

Often, wikis take the place of meetings.  Think of the wiki as the meeting room.  When you have time you come in and say what you need to say or get the information you need.  Then you leave.  Allow anyone in the meeting to do that and you have a meeting you can join when you have the free time, and still get the same information.  I agree – it is not as personal.  But how many meetings have we been in that are all status and anything but personal?  Way too many.

For a final project of mine (in pursuit of my masters degree) I created a wiki page with all the info there.  Although not requiring feedback, it was a easy place for me to put the information for anyone to see and use in the future.

Some of my favorite uses:

• Brainstorming – again, no need to be in the same room, just be in the same wiki
• Collaborating on a project
• Creating a knowledge base
• Manuals (instead of pointing people to a static PDF, point them to a living, breathing and up-to-date document)
• Any collaborative work – especially school group assignments (I don’t know how many teleconferences and meetings a wiki has saved me!)

TO DO – Apply to Your Circumstances (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 10- minutes)

This is ‘homework’ of the most fluid kind.  It is time to brainstorm.  Go to your wiki you created yesterday and think about and type out some ways you could use a wiki – inside and outside of work. To help, answer some of these questions:

• Where/When might I need others’ input?
• Do I have a lot of emails floating around that I wish would go away? Can I use a wiki instead?
• Is there any documentation that needs updating that I could put out there?
• Is there a meeting that is marginally useful that a wiki could help with?

More specific questions:

• Are you a kids sports coach and need people to sign up to bring snacks?
• Do you have a project at work that could use some better collaboration or record keeping?
• Need input from colleagues on an idea?

Week 4: Wikis: Day 1

Not only have you lived this scenario, but I am sure you all love it – right…?

Photo by darkpatator on Flickr

You need to get some feedback on a proposal so you write it up in Microsoft Word and save it on your computer.  Then you create a new email message, attach the file, add an introduction and send it off to 4 choice people.  They each open it, modify it (with tracking on), save it to their computer, create a new email message, attach the modified file, add a high level explanation of their thoughts and send it back to you.  You now have four email messages with four attachments – all of which you open, plus your original one (a total of 5 almost identical documents are now open).  Now you cut and paste their changes into your document and save it.  You email back two of the four with an explanation or clarification of a question they asked and that starts two separate conversations with follow up emails.  You create a new email message, attach the newly revised document and send it back to the four original people for a final look.  Two of them respond with an agreement on the document, two of them make more changes, to which you respond by creating…

(Honestly, I could go on, but I am tired of it and I think you know the end of the story.)

STOP THE MADNESS!

How about a new situation.    You go online and create a web page (with one click) and type in your information and save it.  Four others go to that page, make the changes  and comment on those changes – all on the same page.  You are alerted when they have done this and you go to the page and review the changes each has made.  You edit the page again.  They receive a notice that you have edited it again and review it one last time.  A couple of them make some more comments.

Done.  That is how you might use a WIKI.

Wiki Advantages:

• Constant – realtime
• One place to collaborate
• Searchable / Taggable
• Archived
• Interactive
• Learning increases

A wiki (a Hawaiian word meaning ‘quick’) is an online web page that anyone can edit.  So instead of collaborating on one document that lives in many different places, it lives in one place and all the collaboration interaction lives there.

TO DO – Sign up for a Wiki (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 5- minutes)

1. Go to WetPaint – a free online wiki.
2. In the upper right, create a wiki by entering a name for it and the URL (or web address).  Create one that compliments the blog you created in Week 1.  Remember, using each of these new technologies revolves around a purpose.
3. Click “GO!”
4. Enter in the information to sign up and click “Sign Up Now”
5. That’s it.  Play around with it if you would like, or wait for tomorrow…