Westwood The Net and U
Terry Anderson
terrya@athabascau.ca

• May 13
– What can our youth teach us about Net use
– Web affordances - Demos, and Questions
• May 20
– Taxonomy of the Soul in Cyberspace
• Enhancing place bound churches
• Substituting Net for face-to-face activities
• Net Native Religious activities

Net is a Disruptive Technology!
Low, High End, Non-consumer Disruptions

Five technological capabilities
Awareness Recognise the new technologies, their
products and applications.
User Use the new technological tools to support
learning, work and life.
Maker Apply the new technologies to produce new
‘products’ and services.
Evaluator Make critical judgments about the new
technologies, their products and their impacts.
Holistic Recognise the impact of the new technologies
on how we think.
Prof. David Layton

Introductions
• Tell us about an instance when you used
effectively (or ineffectively) web resources, or
their use added confusion.
• Do you have something you want to learn or
share about the net in these sessions?

Affordances of the Net
1. Access to Information –
anything, anytime, any format
2. Access to Others –
friends, families, networks, communities
3. Collaborative/Individual Production and
sharing

Access to Anything
• Searching Beyond Google
– Yelp reviews
– DogPile
• Photos on Flickr
• Bookmarks on Diigo
• Sites for Book Lovers
• Google Maps and Google Earth
• And of course Wikipedia
• And thousands of web 2.0 sites – go2web20.net

Social Software for Networks and
Groups
• Profiles
• Photos
• Blogs
• Calendars
• File management
• See ning and
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=uni
tarians&page=1

Access to People: Social Networks
• Facebook:
– Profiles – finding others
– Sharing photos, comments on the wall,
– Email and discussion groups
– Applications
– Keeping in touch with distant friends/relatives
• Demo: My Facebook

http://wuuters.ning.com/

A closed Social Network NING
• Ning –
– Free with ads
– Easy to set as public or private
– Unitarians on Tap
• Elgg
– Sets permissions for all content
– Me2u.athbascau.ca (accessible only by Athabasca
students and staff – sorry)

Collaborative/Individual Production
and sharing
• Google Apps
• Blogs – see the Virtual Canuck
• Group sharing/discussing – Voice Threads
• Wikis – collaborative documents
creation/editing for example PBWiki
• Project Management Scrumy

Your turn
• Is there a net site or application you would like
to share with us??
• Do you have a burning question
• See you next week we look specifically at
applications for groups, networks and
collectives at Westwood.