Week 2 - Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals

Now that Week 3 is almost over, I should probably post my Week 2 summary! Oops!

The focus of this weeks Work Literacy - Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals course was on Social Bookmarking--Delicious and Diigo. I had already been using Delicious for a while, but upon discovering Diigo I've decided to switch. Actually, I'm still using both, but I'm focusing on using Diigo for my professional bookmarks and Delicious for all of my bookmarks, including the personal ones... I think. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the best use of both of them. All I've done so far is bookmark (with tags) all websites/blogs/tools that I find interesting or that might be useful in my research of Web 2.0 tools for work. This should make it easier for me to find them again later.

Diigo has more of a community feel to me, but Delicious is still the more popular and "accepted" site as far as I can tell. However, Diigo does have some features that I like that aren't available on Delicious, primarily highlighting and commenting on bookmarked pages. I also like that I can set up my Diigo bookmarks to feed automatically into Delicious, so I really only have to bookmark pages once (both public and private) in Diigo and they show up on both sites.

For the class, people were tagging their bookmarks with wlning on Delicious. Check out the list here: http://delicious.com/tag/wlning.

Tagging bookmarks certainly has a use in training. For example, if I was teaching people about blogging I could create a special tag for the class such as AmFamBlogging, and any time someone found an interesting article on blogging they could bookmark it and tag it appropriately, basically sharing their knowledge with others who attended the class and who might attend the class in the future. This could also be useful for bookmarking competitor or industry information to be shared with others in the company.

Another use might be to use the "network" feature on Delicious in order to view the tags of an "expert" in a field. As an example, if you thought I was an expert on Web 2.0, you could see everything I've tagged web2.0 on Delicious here: http://delicious.com/collin.k/web2.0. Here's that same list in my Diigo account: http://www.diigo.com/user/collin_k/web2.0.

So many ideas, so little time!

The topic for Week 3 is blogs. Looks like I may be a little ahead of the curve on that one.

Opportunity Knocks - Input Needed

I've received a request, and I'm hoping my readers can help me come up with some ideas for a solution.

A colleague is developing a training program on an application roll-out that will be delivered in a traditional classroom setting. Inevitably, questions will be asked during the classes where the instructor doesn't know the answers. Traditionally, our instructors use a "parking lot", capturing those questions on an easel pad. Subject matter experts are consulted by phone or email, either during classroom breaks or immediately following the class. When the answers come in after class, the instructor usually emails them to the participants.

There HAS to be a better way!

Remember, I work for a very conservative insurance company, though I do have some leeway to be innovative. Privacy is an issue, and we prefer that the questions and answers only be seen by people inside the company. It would also be beneficial if screen-shots of the application could be posted if necessary to answer the questions.

We don't have any internal solutions for blogs, forums, wikis, etc. Assume that anything we use either has to be installed on a web server (which would be very prohibitive due to I/T constraints), or has to be available on the web. I have Dreamweaver and Captivate available for development of a web solution behind our firewall.

I'm registered at Yammer and QikCom, and I think either of them could work (except for the screen-shots). Of course, I was the first person in the company to register at both of them, and only 3 others have followed me to Yammer!

Ning could work too, but that might be over-doing it for this request.

Is there a way to do this with a blog, an RSS feed, and something like PageFlakes or NetVibes?

What about a wiki at a place like Google Sites?

I'm open to discussing any and all suggestions. Please post a reply with your thoughts.