Help deciding which web 2.0 tools to add to my site
Dear Colleagues,
I have been wanting to make my website more interactive: www.globalization101.org. The problem has been a small staff and relatively small budget. I'm not a techie and run the site through a content managment system. We do not want to reinvent the wheel, yet we want to keep people on the site. I have a good team in India who can write the codes for me and put the system on the site - I need to tell them what I want to create/add. The site is geared to high school and college educators and students and so this resource could be for students or for educators. I will welcome all suggestions. Thank you.
I have been wanting to make my website more interactive: www.globalization101.org. The problem has been a small staff and relatively small budget. I'm not a techie and run the site through a content managment system. We do not want to reinvent the wheel, yet we want to keep people on the site. I have a good team in India who can write the codes for me and put the system on the site - I need to tell them what I want to create/add. The site is geared to high school and college educators and students and so this resource could be for students or for educators. I will welcome all suggestions. Thank you.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Smolar on
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Thanks for your quick response. It confirms many of the ideas I wanted to start with - social bookmarks, RSS feeds, and building the framework for a blog (with hopes of recruiting guest bloggers to lead conversations on different topics).
My only worry about the video/audio is the size of the site - it will cost a lot more to pay for the next level of bandwidth and I don't have the funds to commit to the increase bandwidth until we get our next grant..
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Craig on
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No need to have them upload it to your site. Just make it easy to pull content in from popular media sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr, and the like). I'd also encourage you not to rely on a single one of those services since your audience is likely as global as your topic. This can be done by allowing embed, div, iframe, and other tags that enable content to be served inside a page.
Dan
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Hi Rebecca,
Skip sounds like a wise man, so not much to add. However, I am a sucker for making connections to people/content/ideas/etc. You site seems to be the perfect place to encourage people to meet on a common topic of interest. Social bookmarking is great for sharing information (content), but what about meeting together around common interests? For this, I think that you could implement social networking (and grouping) functions, but that is not easy to do. An easier/cheaper way would be to host a wiki and encourage the development of topics and discussions that create shared artifacts for the group (and the outside world). Most wiki applications also have multiple language support, so discussions/topics can take place in many different languages at the same time.
Good luck,
Dan
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Dan,
I like the Wicki idea - however I have to figure out where and how to implement it - I would need it to be a separate section because I want at least our Issue Briefs to remain unchangeable - many teachers and especially college professors won't accept Wickipedia as a source of information b/c sometimes the info is wrong - and if I want them to trust our site as a source of info - I can't have the ability for anyone to change the core information.
However, if we had quotes or sections of these briefs - as a set of discussion questions - then this would be more feasible. Then shared discussion for these wickis - would be like adding a blog or discussion box after each wicki - I set up (i.e. a wicki for defining globalization, a wicki for the topic "Is globalization, westernization?", etc?
As for having more video/audio content - I'm sure my Indian team will understand these instructions: "This can be done by allowing embed, div, iframe, and other tags that enable content to be served inside a page." - but can you explain it to me.
Thanks.
Rebecca
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Hi Rebecca,
It's like ning (where CR2.0 resides) does with videos. For example, I can embed a video in this posting by using the code that YouTube provides next to each of its videos. All of the media sharing sites do something similar, but not all use the same HTML tags to do it. YouTube uses "embed" tags, but other services use tags like "div" or "iframe" to accomplish this.
By enabling support for these tags in your video section, you will likely be supporting the widest range of technologies for sharing. At the same time, you will not be using any of your Web server storage or bandwidth because it all comes from the sharing site, not yours.
Hope that helps.
Dan
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Dan,
I understand.. Thanks.
Rebecca
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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on
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The tools you choose should depend on what functions or user input you want. CFirst decide what you want to do and then matching the tool should come easily
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