W3C Web Semantics & Internet2

I have linked the title of this blog to Ivan Herman's personal web site. Ivan is the Semantic Web Activity lead at the World Wide Web Consortium and This is fascinating work that is taking place on the web. In fact, I did not understand most of the terminology but understand now the concept. RDF (Resource Description Framework) is part of the language used in the W3C to create searches that are less work on part of the search and the machine thinking like that of the searcher. Let me clear that up. The RDF 'Triple' which means the search is going to look at the (S)ubject, and then it is predicated upon something (P)redicate, and then finally that returns a third piece of information, the (O)bject. Allow me to try and explain a little more. In Ivan's PPT presentation at the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference his topic was entitled: T1 Introduction to the Semantic Web. In his presentation he gives a simple example of someone wanting to go on vacation to Budapest, Hungary. Instead of having to look up airlines, hotels, pictures, write-ups etc. Why not have the web link all of those searches together. For instance, the Subject is a vacation to Budapest, and the Predicate is that there will be a need for airlines and hotels, and the resulting Object will be the sites to all of those predicates associated with the subject. I hope I got this kind of correct. This is the kind of information I want to learn more about and think about when re-entering the workforce.

On the subject of Internet2 I believe that this is a completely new set of internet networks for people in education and research. I looked at a couple of example handout pieces of literature on their website that explain more in depth as to what the Internet2 project can do. Here is the link to the Information Kits http://www.internet2.edu/info/#informationsheets Here you will see examples of students at a mid-western college wanting to take a screenwriting course, but do not have access to the agents, writers, producers that the California State University at Los Angeles do. Now Bradley College in Peoria, Illinois has access to the screenwriting classes at CSLA and is able to benefit from the industry lecturers through using the internet for virtual classroom time. This is all great stuff and the network is using top of the line equipment that should not need any upgrading for at least the next 3-5 years.

Survey Monkey

Click on the title of this blog: "Survey Monkey" to get connected to my Soda Survey. It is pretty dry. However this was a fun exercise. I am totally enjoying my classmates surveys. I found survey monkey to be fairly simple and it is a great tool to have if you need to poll a group of people. See you all in class on Thursday. Don't forget to feed the fish!

The Cushing Academy

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120097876

I think that this article is a great starting point for some really great conversation about the future of the library. I think that the biggest takeaway from this article is that people/students learn in different ways. To have a 100% digital library will take away a form of learning (by reading a bound book) that others thrive on. Please post any of your thoughts.

Made it! 23 Things Learned from Learning 2.0

This has been an exciting journey for the entire class. Many of us started off with such apprehension and anxiety over many of the topics. I remember at the onset of Learning 23 Things the most popular fear among the class was actually putting ourselves 'out-there' on-line and the things we thought were going to happen to our identities, pictures, etc. The last three exercises seemed simple in the end when looking in the rear view mirror of the project. YouTube downloads, Podcast downloads to blogline, and downloading a book from the public library NO PROBLEM...Compared to RSS feeds and Flickr a few months back we are now proficient in so many different areas. For me the fear of trying a new program or application is gone. And the most important part of the entire exercise was to have fun. I still can't believe that I transposed my head onto Rodney Dangerfield's body when he was doing the Triple Lindey in the movie "Back to School." I plan on re-visiting this website at least once every six months to keep my skills sharp. I am a fan of NPR's podcast. Ones that I browsed on from the topics section that were made by people I did not know, I found that I was having a hard time appreciating them because I was unsure of their validity. My latest hurdle to overcome. Any please feed my fish here on the blog whenever you feel like it. See you in class.

Spider-man Original Cartoon Theme Song

Using YouTub is this weeks Learning 2.0's 20th exercise. It is almost unfathomable to believe what the author mentioned on the Learning 2.0 video that the amount of time that all people using YouTube have spent watching videos would be over 9000 years long. I can't enough of YouTube, but 9000 years is insane. I know that I use it as much as I use Google. The greatest thing about YouTube is that you can get video and sound of concerts that you may have never been able to get. Think about getting all of the BETA, VHS, and 8mm analog tape that has filmed amazing concerts by a musicians you were totally in to over the last (4) decades and it is now being digitally archived and available to anyone! LIBRARIANS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

Please run your mouse over the title of this post and click on - "Spider-Man Original Cartoon Theme Song," and you will watch and listen to the attached Spider-Man Original Cartoon Theme Song that Christopher likes to listen to about 30 times a week. There is a half hour added on to the 9000 years. :-) Christopher's favorite part is when Spider-Man waves at him. :-)

Website

The website building exercise, for me, was so exciting and challenging. I started off with so much anxiety and then found myself engulfed in trying to make the site look as good as I possibly could with the minimal experience that I have. Truthfully, I am really proud that I was able to do this. This is a hands on assignment. I could read Castro's book on coding XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) two times through and still not be able to demonstrate any knowledge of how to build a website unless I actually did it. Even the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) work was impressive in that making sure that all of my files and paths were correct. I am hoping to learn more as we move forward in class and start working with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Again here is my link to my site:

http://eden.rutgers.edu/~jirwin/550/assn5/myresume.html

My Website Woo Hoo - with links and pics too!!

http://eden.rutgers.edu/~jirwin/550/assn5/myresume.html