week 4

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

Doing the research before you believe the "expert"

• background check
• related information gathering
• peer evaluation
• personal communication

I think the assessment could vary in different settings. In the web era, you could not observe the behaviors of the person. The only way to evaluate the expertise of a person is based on your own opinion. Even though there are lots of approaches to achieve the information, I think we should be careful about the assessment. Just a real case.

Last year, there was a scandel happened in China. Zhenglong Zhou, a famer in Shanxi Province, posted a series of photos of wild South China tiger online. Accroding to the report, this kind of tiger has been extinct for three years. Hence, his posting got all the people's attentions. He even was regarded as a hero. Shanxi Province invested tons of money to look for the wild tiger. Unfortunately, some internet users critisized the accuracy of the pictures. Some people thought Zhenglong Zhou made over these pictures using photoshop. There was a serious debating around this topic. To be honest, there were lots of political issues which led the local government lost in the assessment. After several months' debating and investigation, these pictures were approved to be fake.

In this story, I just want to say, with the development of technologies, the accuracy of the information and the expertise of the expert has become difficult to evaluate. We should be much more careful to believe the expertise.

A specific explanation of metadata

I got this from wikipedia. Sharing with you all.

Metadata (meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is "data about other data", of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items and hierarchical levels, for example a database schema. In data processing, metadata provides information about, or documentation of, other data managed within an application or environment. This commonly defines the structure or schema of the primary data.
For example, metadata would document data about data elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about records or data structures (length, fields, columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.). Metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. It may be recorded with high or low granularity.

Chapter 7 is talking about metadata for the knowledge structure, which I thought is one of the key features of web 2.0. For me web 2.0 is not just social network, communication, etc, it also refers to the convenient information achievement. Using the tag, hyperlink, and other bookmarks could facilitate the information getting. This is also the benefit of web 2.0.
In this fast-speed society, time-saving is a component to ensure success. Web 2.0 probives an opportunity and help to reduce the time spending on information gathering.
I do believe web 2.0 could help the society develop.

web 2.0 application in different settings

Last week, in the weekly meeting in my office, my supervisor led a discussion related to web 2.0. He did not mention the exact concept web 2.0, instead, he talked about facebook and wiki. The whole story was the IT personnel and the communication office personnel suggested Facebook and wiki could be allowed to access to facilitate the communication in working time. However, the top executives in the Department could not accept that since they thought people could be distracted from working if they are allowed to use facebook.
Around this issue, we had a discussion. At the end, it became a discussion in different generations. The elders can't accept the new tech. The youngers are on the contrary.
After the discussion, I had some thoughts. I work for the state department, which is not that flexible. During the working time, we could just access the intranet and use some websites related to work. All the other sites are forbidden.

I have a question. If you have some experience, just help me. :)

1. Could web 2.0 be applied in the organization like this? Definitely, there are lots of article talking about the application of web 2.0 in some global companies, like the Google, Costco, etc. However, there are lots of limitation of the application of web 2.0 in the government and lots of companies. As the instructional designer, if we need to promote the new technology, how could we convenience the vendor that the benefits are overweight the costs?

Wiki, Blogs in the business setting

I have used wiki and blogs in the studying and working for several years. Since in China, we could not achieve wiki freely, I did not use that. In stead, I used blogs for information and experience sharing. My first utilization of blog into learning is about cosmetic. Here is the link. http://www.wretch.cc/blog/arora The blogger posts her operation on cosmetic products in the blog. As the followers, we learn from her and post our questions on the blog. Not even her, other experienced person will answer our questions. Hence, our learning on cosmetic products will be enhanced.

My experience on wiki is mainly in academic setting. I have used wiki for information collection in a project and used wikispace to set up an online community in some case studies. I will give a specific example here. Last semester, in the organization behavior class, we need to do lots of case studies with some classmates. We used wikispace as our tool to communicate instead of face to face meeting. Every member could publish its own thoughts on wikispace and comment on others. After discussion, we consolidated all the informations and finished our case study. It definitely facilitate the communication and maximize the achievement of collaborative intelligence.

However, there are lots of challenges of the application of wiki and blog in different settings. My concern is in the business setting. There are some successful cases about the application of wiki and blog in business setting. In Lockheed Martin, teh CIO started to use blog when they introduced blog into their work. The electrical engineers use wiki to share the experience and information in Google. However, these successful cases don't mean succeeding in the application of wiki and blogs is a piece of cake. There are lots of challenges.

First, the fear of new tech. Employees will fear of change. The introducing of new tech will mean the redesign of job and significant changes will take place.

Second, the confliction between the existing workflow and the new tech. I have already discussed this in another post.

Third, the motivation of the utilization of new tech.



I recommend again an article here:

Six ways to make web 2.0 work

from McKinsey Quarterly.

In the article, lots of challenges have been analyzed and associated solutions have been provided.

Hope you could enjoy the article.

:)

The first try on Diigo

To be honest, I am not a fan of new tech. When I find something really useful, I will be sticked on it. For example, I like Google. Eventhough everyday there are lots of advertisements about Bing, I will love Google.
Taking web 2.0 provides me lots of opportunities to try new stuff. I have started to use Flickr and Diigo.
In the promotion video, diigo's function is fully illustrated. It is a searching engine, online bookmark, highlight tool, experience sharing community, and social networking.
Hope it could facilitate my future online reading.

Six ways to make Web 2.0 work------the reflection on a recommended article

Recently, I have read an article about web 2.0 on Mckinsy Quarterly.

-----Six ways to make Web 2.0 work

-------- Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities for companies that know how to use them.



Generally speaking, I think this article provides a clear picture about the utilization of web 2.0 in business settings from the strategic level. It analyzes the obstacles of the application of web 2.0 and provides six strategies to solve these problems.



1. the transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top.

2. The best uses come from users-but they require help to scale.

3. What is in the workflow is what gets used.

4. Appeal to the participants' egos and needs-not just their wallets.

5. The right solution comes from the right participants.

6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.





Among these strategies, I personnally think number three is the most interested issue. Truely, lots of companies will require the employees to endeavor extra efforts during the implementing period of new technologies or approaches. In these cases, initially, employees will present their enthusiasms. They will immerse themselves into the new tech and even sacrifice their breaking time to experiment it. However, with the proceeding of the new tech, their enthusiasm will fade away. They are sick of performing the routine jobs plus extra work. Hence, their performance on both routine jobs and the new tech will be negatively influenced. In order to solve this dilemma, companies should insert the new tech into the existing workflow. In another word, the company should redesign the jobs and make the new tech televant to how employees actually do their jobs.



This article provides both negative and positive cases in the application. I like the writing style of the author. Hence, recommend the article to all of you who are interested in web 2.0 and the application of web 2.0 in business settings.

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