1. Web 2.0 Communication Tools MERLOT Managing Director
MERLOT VOICES
MERLOT Introduces
Web 2.0 Communication Tools
Dr. Sorel Reisman
MERLOT Managing Director

2. MERLOT’s Vision
MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

3. Shared Learning Materials*
*August 3, 2008

4. Shared Comments

5. MERLOT Mid-Year Meeting Report
Experimenting with Management Wiki
Abandoned single, threaded discussion effort
Prototype in test
To test alternative communications tools
Chat/discussion/wiki/blog/etc
To explore utility of tools
To investigate deployment of all or selective tools – overall MERLOT, in portals, other

6. MERLOT Voices Field Test of collaboration tools
Explore & understand MERLOT community communication needs
“Uncontrolled” communication environment
Low startup resource investment
Understand required maintenance/operating resource requirements
Understand “terms of agreement” requirements

7. Conditions Totally independent application
Not integrated with the MERLOT application
Hosted on commercial server site
Terms of Service usage are a supplement to MERLOT Acceptable Use Agreement (AUP)
All forum posts fall under Creative Commons License described in MERLOT AUP – non commercial, attribution, non derivative, share-alike
Joining Voices requires separate “join”
Not required to be MERLOT registered member

8. Three Collaboration Environments
General
For all registered participants
MERLOT Created Communities
Parallel to MERLOT portal communities
Personal Voices Page
Create personal Voices collaboration page

9. 1. General Environment For all registered Voices members
Participate in MERLOT-initiated discussion forums – e.g. - FAQ
Initiate new general interest forums
Post videos
Visit select MERLOT-created communities
Create “personal” Voices page
Invite others

10. 2. MERLOT-Created Communities
Optional participation by Voices’ members
Discussion forums for MERLOT portal-like communities
Includes a few volunteer MERLOT discipline communities
Includes MERLOT-created “test” communities

11. 3. Personal Voices Page
Automatically created by registering for Voices
Create personal discussion forums
Create personal blogs
Invite friends and colleagues

13. Supplemental “Terms of Service”
Separate “Join”
and
Supplemental “Terms of Service”

14. Content co-managed by Participants and Webmaster
“Main” Page
Content co-managed by Participants and Webmaster

15. Displays Shortcuts to:
Most recent Voices member photos
MERLOT-Defined Community Forums
MERLOT-Defined Community Conversations
All Posted videos
Navigation links to other parts of Voices

19. Personal Page

20. VISIT
Invite 3 friends
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