When Nature Calls, Turn to Web 2.0

There’s something for everyone on social media these days, and two websites — Sit or Squat and MizPee — prove that.

Sit or Squat is a relatively new Web 2.0 site that seriously lives up to its name. When you sign up, the site provides you with a map of all the rest rooms nearby where you can relieve yourself. The Sit or Squat reference? That’s meant for anyone who wants to know whether you’d be safer to sit or squat once there.

On a recent visit to Sit or Squat, I was furnished with an interactive map of White Plains, NY, where I live. I was able to quickly determine that all the major department stores near me — Target, Walmart, Fortunoff, Bloomingdales and more — had rest rooms. Nothing new there. But users also tell you what the conditions are like in those rest rooms.

When I clicked on WalMart, here’s what one reader warned: “YUCK! DISGUSTING! GO ACROSS THE STREET TO TARGET.”

Another reader, who has obviously used the facilities at the nearby Fortunoff department store, made my search easier by noting: “On 3rd floor, near ATM and water fountain.”

I was also able to view the photo taken by the user of a lonely portajohn located somewhere on South Lexington Avenue in downtown White Plains. (See photo at the top of this post.) That contributor also called it the “Blue Box o’ Mercy.” As would be expected, that particular spot was stamped with a big “Squat.”

You can also download Sit or Squat to your iPhone or Blackberry, so you can use it when you are traveling and really have to go. It functions worldwide and is based on Google Maps, and anyone can submit their favorite, or least favorite, “throne” to the site.

MizPee is a simple text service that finds the closest (and supposedly cleanest) toilet near you.Using your cell phone, you simply send a text message of your location (city and state) to the number 415-350-2290. MizPee will send you information about the nearest rest rooms, which includes a rating system for cleanliness and information about whether you need to be a paying customer at the location before using the loo.

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Survey: Barriers to Web 2.0 Use in Schools Still Exist

A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.Image via Wikipedia

Not surprisingly, a new survey shows that teachers and students are driving the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in schools, but that human and technological barriers are holding back the use of these technologies as learning tools in many classrooms.

The survey, commissioned by Lightspeed Systems and Thinkronize Inc., creator of the kids’ search engine netTrekker, shows that online communication tools for parents and students have caught on quickly, but online social networking for instruction has a long way to go.

The most frequently identified “human-factor” barriers to the use of Web 2.0 technology were:

– the need to monitor appropriate use of online social networks (55 percent)

– lack of teacher knowledge about how to use the technology effectively (51 percent)

– teacher perceptions about its lack of instructional value or appropriateness (48 percent)

The most frequent technology barriers were:

– concerns about student safety (76 percent)

– concerns about district network or data security (35 percent)

– limited support systems, including technology personnel (27 percent)

You can read more about the survey at eSchoolNews Online.

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David Jakes, EdTech Guy

I just love this guy, and because I’m preparing my own workshops for educators in Dutchess County, NY, and for school PR folks at the National School PR Association conference, I’ve been trolling the Web for great Web 2.0 presentations. Jakes never fails to amaze me — he has dozens of great presentations posted on his website and I’d like to share one with you. Enjoy. I might post Jakes’ presentations here now and then — hope he doesn’t mind!

 

TCEA Best Practice
View more presentations from djakes. (tags: bestpractice djakes)

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Confounded Blateration! Savethewords Expands Your Vocabulary

A funny little Web 2.0 site out there will literally beg you to broaden your knowledge base and expand your vocabulary.

Savethewords will make you chuckle, yes, but you might learn something in the process. Try these words on for size, for example. (I’ll provide the definitions at the end of this post).

Lubency
Sophronize
Blateration
Eicastic

The website offers a collage of dozens of little-known words, and when you get there, you hear cute little voices saying things like “pick me” and “over here.” The point is to “adopt” a new word. When you do, savethewords provides you with a definition of the word you’ve adopted and emails you a certificate of adoption. By accepting the certificate, you “promise to use the word, both in conversation and correspondence, as often as possible” and to the best of your ability.

It’s all in good fun and encourages us to expand our knowledge of the ever-evolving English language. As a former journalist, taught to write conversationally, I might never use the word “eicastic.” At the same time, can it hurt me to learn something new?

Check out savethewords and have some fun.

As promised, here are those definitions:

Lubency: noun. Willingness: pleasure. He is running for office, hence his sudden lubency to help little old women cross the street.
Sophronize: verb. To instill with well-grounded moral principles. Strangely, the Paris Hilton book “How to Sophronize Your Child” never found a publisher.
Blateration: noun. Blabber, chatter. I had to listen to my mother’s blateration for 30 minutes just because I got back at 2 a.m.


Eicastic: adjective. Imitative. The parrot’s eicastic abilities caused the maid to believe that someone was actually starting the car.

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College and Plagiarism

Image representing wePapers as depicted in Cru...

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One of my favorite websites, makeuseof.com, is a great resource for anyone looking for the latest Web 2.0 tools and technology available. This week, they listed two interesting sites that sort of cancel each other out. One of those sites, wePapers, is an interactive platform for students that provides searchable student paper databases of study related notes, articles and course work. Students can upload their own papers, or search and browse papers submitted by other users. Any paper on the site can be viewed, printed out or saved to your computer. wePapers also provides a messaging system so students can communicate, ask questions, and work together.

As tempted as I might be, I probably won’t tell my two college-age students about this site. Although chances are, they’re way ahead of me on this one.

I will, however, tell them about the next site mentioned by makeuseof. ThePlagiarismChecker is an online tool that allows anyone to check student papers for plagiarism.  While students can use the site to check their papers for missing citations before submitting them, educators can also use it to check papers for stolen information.

These two sites are interesting and juxtaposed examples of how Web 2.0 has made a huge difference in the world of learning and academia. On the one hand, my college kids have information at their fingertips that I never had access to as a college student, hunched over mountains of printed resources in my college library back in the dark ages. But the reverse is true as well — college professors are able to detect, at the touch of their keyboard, plagiarism and downright laziness. Ah — the information age!

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More on Social Media, Colleges and Universities

Many thanks to Heather Mansfield of Diosa Communications for promoting my post, “Why Schools Need to Get on the Social Media Bandwagon,” on her website. You can find my post here and at PROpenMic, one of my favorite Ning social networking sites. Speaking of Ms. Mansfield, she’s a web 2.0 consultant and expert with a great site that, among other things, lists good reads on the topic of using Web 2.0 tools in education. On her higher education page, she lists Web 2.0 Articles, Blogs, and Resources for Higher Education.
She also highly recommends the use of MySpace by colleges and universities, since they’re listed there on MySpaceSchools anyway. Here are two great links she sent along:
Her MySpace Portal
Her FaceBook page
Let’s see if her hard work pays off and if colleges and universities eventually get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

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Andrew Sullivan’s “Why I Blog”

Ichimame, an 19-yea...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, a writer I admire, has written an ode to blogging that I like very much. Considering the fact that I’ve suffered from my first real bout of writer’s block over the past few days (thanks to a two-day trip to Rochester, NY, my work on a presentation about Web 2.0 technology, picking up a writing award in Manhattan, and a visit from my two college kids), reading Sullivan again has put me back on the right track.
Blogging is a solitary pursuit, and for me a pursuit that doesn’t pay the bills and attracts only a small (though loyal) audience. So occasionally, I run dry. But posting to my blog is constantly a thought that nags at me, reminds me that I’m still a writer. I might be getting older, I might be on a damned diet again, I might be finding excuses to avoid the gym, but my brain is still working. I want to learn, read and write.
Here’s what Sullivan says about blogging:

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.

And when I’m feeling that this is so solitary a pursuit, I’ll try to remember how Sullivan describes the immediacy and companionship provided to a blogger by his readers, commenters and dissenters.

On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print. The same goes for the 2000 recount, the Iraq War, the revelations of Abu Ghraib, the death of John Paul II, or any of the other history-making events of the past decade. There is simply no way to write about them in real time without revealing a huge amount about yourself. And the intimate bond this creates with readers is unlike the bond that the The Times, say, develops with its readers through the same events. Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.

The next time I run dry, I’ll return here for water.

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You Need to Go to Unigo

The New York Times recently featured a piece about Unigo and the 20-something kid who dreamed up the idea, Jordan Goldman. I immediately checked out the site, and initially had trouble getting on. It might have sensed that at my age, I had no business being on a website created and maintained by college students.

But I tried again later, and it let me in. I have two college students, for crying out loud. And a $67,000-a-year tuition payment. I deserve a break today.

What I saw in Unigo was fun and promising, a classic example of Web 2.0 — user-generated content — about to take off from the crowded Internet runway but with good genes and youthful enthusiasm bearing it aloft.

Goldman, a graduate of Wesleyan University, spent a couple of years after graduation in Europe, then returned to New York City to develop his business plan and go begging for investors. His plan worked, and today he runs an office of about 25 young people who manage Unigo and a crew of intern correspondents spread out over the nation’s colleges and reporting back in with videos, photos and updates.

The site thrives on student-written critiques of their own colleges, and already would appear to be one step ahead of those on-paper college guides we all used in the past. Here’s what Goldman says in the Times piece about his site:

“My whole family chipped in for me to go to college,” he said. “They were saving from when I was 2 or 3 years old. That the best resource for a four-year, $200,000 decision are these books — with no photos, no videos, no interactivity, only three to five pages per school on average, fully updated usually once every several years — just doesn’t make the grade. This is the most important decision people that age have ever made, and the information is just not there.”

Here’s how it works:

Each Unigo editor has a list of 10 colleges (including, always, his or her own alma mater) to oversee; their most important task may be finding an unpaid intern on each campus willing to act as a liaison and an occasional reality-checker for Unigo’s efforts. The real masterstroke, though, was the purchase of a hundred Flip video cameras, which were delivered to the on-campus interns themselves with a minimum of instructions. The results are not only vivid in a way no guidebook can match but also, in the way of the generation that produced them, often guilelessly intimate.

The point is to provide students, and presumably their parents, with an unvarnished look at real life at the colleges they’re considering — something the colleges themselves are not good at providing. Who can blame them? As a parent who drove her kids to nearly every college on the East Coast, only to find that the tours were a bit too rah-rah superficial, I’d rather check out a school on a site like Unigo before packing up the van and heading out who-knows-where. Even if that means I might be watching someone talk online about the campus suicides or the black-white divide that still exists. I’d much rather get to the truth about a place before my kids get there, rather than after they’ve moved in.

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Land of the Open and Free? We’ll See…

I have been a fan of the openness of Web 2.0 — we’re listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, replaying Michael Phelps Olympics videos over and over again. All for free and open to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to click a few times. Everything I’ve read tells me it’s the open source decade, when licenses and copyrights will be a thing of the past. But the former journalist in me is skeptical.

This week, I wrote for another site about the Web 2.0 phenomenon of free books and free magazines online. The old-timer in this area is Project Gutenberg, with its 25,000 free books in its online book catalog. Also out there is the catalog of 30,000 books at the Online Books Page maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, Google Books, and Bibliomania, which has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays online, along with message boards about books and authors and lots of reference materials.

Keep in mind that all these forward-thinking sites are prohibited by copyright law from reproducing any books published after 1923, so they all contain classics. But there’s Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and a slew of other recognizable (albeit classic) authors whose works have outlived the copyright laws.

An even more controversial newcomer to the Web 2.0 world is Mygazines, a site that encourages its members to upload their copies of Life, Time, Playboy and many more magazines as PDFs, which are then converted into easily readable “flip book” versions of magazines that anyone can read for free online. This, of course, has sent the publishing world into a tailspin over copyright laws and I’ve read that attorneys are working overtime to shut the place down. But so far, it’s still out there, as you can see from my screenshot. I personally (former journalist that I am) love it.

For those of you who prefer to live within the confines of the law, Zinio offers a long-overdue service. By obviously partnering with the magazine industry, Zinio offers single-issue purchases of magazines online, providing you with immediate access to the issue you wanted to read and saving on paper by letting you read the entire thing online. Awesome. The corner newsstand on your laptop.

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Hype Yourself with Hyplets

Visiting card of Johann van Beethoven, Brother...Image via Wikipedia

I stumbled across Hyplet, a neat-cool-fun website that instantly lets you create your own “signature” for emails or mini-postcards and business cards that you can copy and paste onto just about anything — emails, blogs, websites, etc. Just sign up with the free Web 2.0 tool and choose your design and words. Then Hyplet will give you a code, along with the Firefox plug-in, that you can use to paste your online signature anywhere. A great little PR device. Here’s what my Hyplet looks like:
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