Friday, February 2, 2007
Continuing with IO In Java
We will continue with IO in Java on Friday 2nd Feb. In this lecture we will learn about object serialization and sum up IO with a mini dojo session. As always those who participate will be elligible for extra credits... those who are interested may want to prepare in advance.
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Completed the mini-dojo for IO in Java.
The participants wrote a class that takes an array of directories and prints details of files (recursively) in those directories. Such a class can be used in a backup utility.
The participants were: Saket, Sumit, Dushyant, and Siddhart.
How blogging (and participatory media) can help budding professionals
A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.
The term "blog" is derived from "Web log." "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Weblog software (also called blog software or blogware) is a category of software which consists of a specialized form of Content Management Systems specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs. CMS facilitates the organization, control, and publication of a large body of documents and other content, such as images and multimedia resources. A CMS often facilitates the collaborative creation of documents. A web content management system is a content management system with additional features to ease the tasks required to publish web content to Web sites.
Web Content management systems are often used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. A content management system may support the following features:
· Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
· Identification of all key users and their content management roles
· The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different content categories or types.
· Definition of the content workflow tasks, often coupled with event messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content.
· The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content.
· The ability to publish the content to a repository to support access to the content. Increasingly, the repository is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates enterprise search and retrieval.
· Some content management systems allow the textual aspect of content to be separated to some extent from formatting. For example the CMS may automatically set default color, fonts, or layout.
A corporate blog is a weblog published and used by the organization to reach its organizational goals. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.
Some benefits of blogs for professionals can be listed as:
· It improves participation spirit, collaboration, and the capabilities of team learning. It is ideal to run projects and to work with heterogeneous teams. It is also useful to promote dialogue and find lateral ideas outside the team.
· It allows integrating conversations with a shared vision. It is an excellent means for the leaders to communicate.
· It is the space where interpretations and different points of view come up so that the any member of the organization can discuss and debate them.
· It is an excellent means for the employees to achieve an integrated vision of the company by joining in conversations.
· It implies an open communication platform that allows new ways relating and coordinating actions among the organizational members and between the latter and the network of external relationships.
· It becomes the written memory of the organization. Furthermore, writing conveys emotional stability which eventually promotes the process of organizational development.
They speed up the transference and transformation of knowledge to make ideas flow easily and take learning into action
Types of corporate blogs
Internal blogs
Corporate blogs can be very strong communication tools within or on behalf of a corporate community. Free from many of the constraints of traditional corporate communications, they can explore original issues and provoke thought among an audience that may tune out from other messages. Generally, anyone can write comments to any post in corporate blogs. Anyone can write a comment to any comment or simply anyone can write a new post, in internal blogs. Internal blogs are in many cases good alternatives to meetings. People may not have frequent meetings, about many important matters, for two reasons:
· distance of the meeting location and
· Availability of all the people at the proposed meeting time.
However the way community members communicate and share information in a blog environment creates practically any number of small or large virtual meetings that community members can participate at any time of the day (or night).Since blogs are open to the community, the hurdle and hesitation of sending invitations to the exact/correct number of related people is removed. Consequently fewer people will feel that they are kept away from the decision making process. Since every post is open to the community, anyone can take part in the decision making process, simply by adding his/her comments. A talking community creates the healthiest environment in the decision making process with collective intelligence of the elite crowd.
Blogs, in many cases, are more practical in use than emails.
Emails are not the best corporate communication and information sharing tools, since
· people receive too many of them and
· People are not always good enough in archiving their emails, therefore they may not find some of them, later when they need them again.
In many big organizations there are at least a few but mostly many internal blogs on their intranet, according to the aim or target of the blog.
Blogs are used at every level of the organization. A good example may be the participation of the production workers with the improvement proposals, using the network connected kiosk around the production area, in some organizations. In such organizations, any other people can make a comment on the proposal and the improvement action is triggered automatically without the hierarchical vertical confirmation process.
Even if the made proposal is not applicable for some reasons, it may still inspire some other members in the crowd for more practical solutions.
External blogs
Primary function of corporate communications/public relations today is network building. External blogs are participatory communications tools that can build complex and effective discussions. Blogs build connections and links between and among your key audiences, which help the corporations to use these networks over time to persuade people to action, to respond to a crisis, to leverage market conversations and to improve the business overall.
Effectiveness of a network depends on
1. number of users
2. connection between the nodes
and blogs are particularly well designed to help a corporation to do the both parameters, since blogs are link-heavy, and the link is the core technology for making networks visible.
The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. This new balance of power, where consumers own marketing is aptly named "Consumer generated marketing". Blogs are not only the corporate tools but also consumer tools that promote companies who fulfill their promises, and to destroy those who break them.
Marketers expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audiences. Once they find them they treat them like VIPs, asking those exclusive previews, product testing, consultation on marketing plan, customer services audit, etc. The business blog can have the additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. It gives businesses an opportunity to show a different side that doesn't have to be all suits and ties. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while all at the same time building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.
How blogging (and participatory media) can help students.
Definition
A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.
Another Definition
Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.
Weblogs are “post-centric” -- the posting is the key unit -- rather than “page-centric,” as with more traditional websites. Weblogs typically link to other websites and blog postings, and many allow readers to comment on the original post, thereby allowing audience discussions.
Information
A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process. Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
Evolution of blogs
The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today
Advantages of Blog
The are many advantages that Blogs offer over a web site:
· No need for installing any server software on the users' machine.
· The user has extensive control over how their blog looks and operates.
· Whenever the user edits his or her blog the results are instantly updated and available to others.
· Like any other website, blogs can be simply linked to and navigated
· You can make as many Blogs as you like on any subject.
· You can post as often as u can. I can’t imagine that I could send an email to my ezine every day but with a Blog you can post as much as you would like.
· Email spam filters do not block Blogs because they are not an email communications.
· You don't have to mess with an HTML layout. You just post your info and the info looks wonderful because the Blog uses the template that you set up.
· Ease of use, where the author can publish to the web without using any programming code.
Can blogs help students?
It's a great tool for Students to air their thoughts clearly, as well as exercise their writing skills. Besides, it can act as a portfolio that will help them showcase their skills and help in the job market."
Ø Blogs act as a personal brand image builder, a knowledge management tool.
Ø Also helps in building a well-networked community of people.
Ø Blogs encourage discussion and debate.
Ø Blogs helps to keep in touch with current and former students, or with colleagues around the world.
How using blog is advantageous for students
The reader response journal or literature log has often been used for readers to comment and reflect on the texts they are reading. These logs, after time, are shared with other class participants. In some cases, a loose-leaf notebook is made accessible to the whole class – forming a collaborative journal. Hence the notion of logs being a shared learning activity is already established as pedagogical practice. In extending the practice of learning journals to blogging there is a similarity between blogs and a traditional learning journal, except that the former is electronically published - thus making it publicly available. The blog has the potential of being immediately public. Anyone else can visit - other students or the teacher - at any time. Reflective hardcopy journals are very private, thus generating a particular private discourse. Blogs on the other hand are not private: they are openly published. The writing style and discourse will be modified as a result yet the traces of learning will remain visible.
The blog can be a record of an individual or a group: of their experiences, observations, advice, impressions, opinions, analysis, notes, and comments across a whole range of subjects – news, politics, travel, economics, journalism, computer programming. Blogs are able to integrate the personal aspect of traditional learning journal or diary that documents a student’s journal through their leaning with the immediate publishing capability of the web.
Ø There are a range of potential applications of blogging technology in education for student communication, Sharing of learning materials, collaboration and professional development for knowledge management.
Ø There are advantages to the public discourse, particularly from the point of view of shared learning experiences.
Ø Other students in the class, or other visitors, can read the logs, and in this respect, the learning is a shared experience or studying is a shared experience.
Ø Students are able to observe others’ learning through reading each other’s learning journal blogs.
Ø The blog was particularly useful to students whose personal study routines lack order and routine. The blog served to keep their lecture notes for safekeeping: a central storage bank of information, which unlike their notebook, was simple to locate, easy to manage and access, and impossible to lose.
Ø The chronology of the blog (the day-by-day linking of entries with dates) gives the students' notes an internal logic: an easy way to organizes their information. This is a definite benefit for those students whose note-taking skills are not yet developed enough to a stage where they can manage and keep a useful set of paper notes.
Ø The process of writing postings focused the students' thinking. It encourages them to review and revise their learning. The students filter the information from classes then record brief summaries onto their blogs. They record the things that seemed (subjectively) important to them – the things that were directly and immediately relevant to them – the things they want to remember for later.
Ø The students definitely feel their notes were personal, yet at the same time were happy about it being viewed 'publicly' by other students and the teacher. They didn't consider their blogs to be intimate enough to be considered private. The students were clear that this is a public presentation of their personal learning. Many commented on the good experience being gained by writing publicly, even for this limited community. Many find the daily "flushing it out" and "pumping it back" process very rewarding: some feel the process force them to improve their writing skills, and many students take pleasure in seeing their entries improve.
Ø The students use their blog for a similar purpose: as a storehouse of vital snippets of information gleaned from their lectures and their own scrawled notes. The blog helped to make meaningful knowledge from learned information.
Ø The blogs have potential in educational settings, not only to track students' learning curves, but also as a learning tool for writing and study skills
Let's ping
One of the most powerful facilities in weblogs is pinging, which involves a person posting a comment about someone else's work on their own blog. They use the 'Track Back' tool to notify the author when they have published the comment, basically inviting them to discuss it.” It alerts the original author that someone has written about them. That's powerful."
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