Mark Frydenberg

I’m going to San Francisco next week for the Web 2.0 Expo conference.  This is the schedule of sessions I hope to be attending. There are several that meet at the same time, so I’ll decide at the time.   The session whose title intrigued me the most was The ABCs of APIs: Why Not Having an API in 2010 is Like Not Having a Website in 2001. Real World Case Studies of API Success   because the title hinted at the change in how people use the Web over the the past ten years, from a tool for personal comunication to one where businesses can communciate and share data and processes with each other.

I had some friends and colleagues over last night to celebrate the publication of my textbook. Corrinne Hoisington made a cameo appearance via Qik.com.

Last year Larry Press  of California State University and I wrote a paper entitled “From Computer Literacy to Web 2.0 Literacy:  Teaching and Learning Information Technology Concepts Using Web 2.0 Tools”.  I presented it at ISECON 2009 and it is now published in the Information Systems Education Journal.

Abstract: Computer literacy has evolved from writing simple BASIC programs to using desktop productivity applications. The shift from mainframe to personal computer brought about the need to rethink computer literacy courses to introduce basic skills and familiarity using desktop productivity applications. While these skills remain important, the recent shift of applications and data from the desktop to the Web has brought about another stage in the evolution of computer literacy education to the extent that today’s students not only need to be “computer literate” but also “Web literate” or “Web 2.0 literate.” Computer literacy courses retained the old concepts, but had less time to cover them because of the need to introduce new concepts. This paper examines approaches to teaching first year college introductory technology courses and suggests practical exercises and skills required for today’s students to be Web 2.0 literate.

Some of my students worked with the JDRF New England Chapter to record their spring research briefing. Thanks to Kevin Bell, Christina Gangi, Eileen Mullan, Taylor Murphy, and Julie Pomponi, who attended the event, recorded the videos, edited and posted them, and posted the accompanying presentations on slideshare.net.  This gave the students the opportunity to create and produce multimedia and interact with blogging and collaboration tools.  Way to go!

Brandon Schug stopped by my office today. Brandon is a former student who graciously allowed me to use his Facebook profile in my textbook.  We were playing with the Qik applicaition for the iPhone, which does live video streaming.

Similar to Facebook Connect, Twitter has launched @anywhere, a new service that allows users to tweet about activity on other sites from anywhere on the Web.

“We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.”

For the past three years, I’ve been working with JDRF  New England Chapter send students to their annual spring researchb briefing.  They record audio or video of the speakers, and post it online. It’s a great opportunity for students to work with a local organization and get experience interacting with multimedia. And they do a wonderful service by making these presentations available online to those who would otherwise not be able to attend their event.

Lauren Shields, public outreach manager,  is coming back today to meet with this year’s team of students who will be assisting in this project. Last year, I was honored with a volunteer award by the JDRF, and the Bentley Observer covered the story.

This Google Spreadsheet displays a Hangman game. It uses the script feature of Google spreadsheets.

Prof. Don Chand asked me to present to a group of 10 directors of The ARC of Massachusetts,  on ideas on how to use social networking tools for fundraising, awareness, and advocacy.  Here are some some points that guided our conversation.

The textbook is published.  I finally saw it in print last week at the Course Technology Conference in Tampa.  This week it’s featured in the Campus Technology Magazine’s Web 2.0 Newsletter.