The first session of the Learning 2.0 programme has covered Instant Messaging and Blogging.
- http://learning20atimperial.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/instant-messaging-im/
- http://learning20atimperial.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/blogs-activities-1-4/
For instant messaging everyone setup a Windows Live/Hotmail/MSN ID and tried out the MSN Web Messenger service. The hope (I think) is that (some) people will continue to use IM throughout the programme.
The web messenger software (as you might expect) is more limited that the full client you can download, and straightaway several people wanted to have multi-way chats. We came to the conclusion this wasn’t possible (although it is if you download the MSN client), but then it seemed that one person managed to setup a 3 way chat – but we don’t know how. The documentation from MSN is useless! (Update: I suspect that someone in the 3 way chat was running the desktop client and started the three way chat)
I’m currently working with a few people in the library and ICT looking at how we might use a ‘corporate’ instant messaging (+ other stuff) tool from Microsoft called ‘Microsoft Office Communicator‘ which integrates with Outlook and other Microsoft tools. We are hoping to look at how this might help teams that are spread across several sites (especially the Medical sites) communicate.
Then on to blogs – a bit more of an individual task to setup a wordpress blog. I decided to stick with this one, rather than creating a new blog specially for the programme (although I do have a WordPress account hanging around somewhere)
I guess the blogs will be listed somewhere as we go forward so we can read each others posts on our experiences in the programme…