Patrick Munson's List: DGL- 2.5 Topic Definitions

• Question: What is online collaboration?
  Answer: Simply put, online collaboration lets a group of people work together in real-time over the Internet. Those engaged in online collaboration can work together on word processor documents, Power Point presentations and even for brainstorming, all without needing to be in the same room at the same time. There are many great online collaboration tools available, which can help your team accomplish its goals.
  

• Brief Description:

    Online collaboration platforms is a general "catch all" term to describe a range of internet based tools that allow people to do things together online. This may include online conversations in forums and email lists, co-creation of documents on wikis, file sharing and storing, etc. There are other pages in the KS Toolkit that go into greater detail about these tools. This page gives a brief overview.
   Wikipedia defines "collaborative workspaces" (16 April 2008):
   "A collaborative workspace or shared workspace is an inter-connected environment in which all the participants in dispersed locations can access and interact with each other just as inside a single entity. The environment may be supported by electronic communications and groupware which enable participants to overcome space and time differentials..."
  

• Web collaboration provides an organization with the capability to collaborate
• with customers or internally via the Internet in real time. Web collaboration packages generally consist of Web-based tools within Web sites to assist an organization in the area of sales, new revenue-generation opportunities, and to enhance customer satisfaction. Web collaboration is essentially the back-end software or service that allows your center to share Web pages with
• customers while offering voice and text chat assistance or to conduct single or multi-user conferences and seminars. Web collaboration can be used in an Internet (IP) environment or integrated with an organizations' existing telephone infrastructure to provide automated customer assistance for a client's Web-based inquiries.

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• Eight Key Concepts

   

  Although media literacy education is only just now beginning to spread in the United States, it has been a required part of the school curriculum in Canada for some time now. The Ontario Ministry of Education, as part of its guide to media literacy, has defined 8 media literacy key concepts. These concepts help to create the framework that is necessary for students to analyze and evaluate the media that surround them.
• All media are constructions. This is arguably the most important concept. The media do not simply reflect external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and are the result of many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions (i.e., to taking them apart to show how they are made).
• The media construct reality. The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been preconstructed and have attitudes, interpretations, and conclusions already built in. Thus the media, to a great extent, give us our sense of reality.
• Audiences negotiate meaning in media. If the media provides us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, each of us finds or "negotiates" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background, moral standpoint, and so forth.
• Media messages have commercial implications. Media literacy aims to encourage awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how they impinge on content, technique, and distribution." Most media production is a business, and so must make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.
• Media messages contain ideological and value messages. All media products are advertising in some sense proclaiming values and ways of life. The mainstream media convey, explicitly or implicitly, ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life and the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.
• Media messages contain social and political implications. The media have great influence in politics and in forming social change. Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns so that we have become McLuhan's Global Village.
• Form and content are closely related in media messages. As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.
• Each medium has a unique aesthetic form. Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

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• Media Literacy (critical thinking, viewing and creating media) integrated into other subjects,
    with emphasis on Language Arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening)

• Internet etiquette is the proper way users conduct themselves in an online environment. Good behavior online is proper etiquette. The rules of internet etiquette are implied by social norms, customs, and culture.
• Cyber etiquette, digital manners, and online etiquette are some of the other words used to describe interenet etiquette, netiquette, because it is digital in nature and related to online activities. These various terms all reference the same thing, proper behavior on the internet, interent etiquette. Netiquette is the cyber word used to encompass the various terms and definition. It's all inclusive.
• Internet etiquette, which means netiquette, is the social code of the internet because etiquette is a social code.
• Etiquette is a social code. It's a code of contemporary standards. Often it is implied by the actions of people rather than written codification.
• Internet Etiquette rules are the rules of good manners that a user would follow in reality applied to the internet.
• Netiquette rules are user and site specific.
• Etiquette facilitates effective communication because it is the set of social conventions humans use to interact.

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• Digital etiquette or netiquette as it is sometimes called, is a basic set of rules you should follow in order to make the internet better for others, and better for you. It's just as important to treat people with courtesy and respect online as it is in real life. When you instant message, chat, or email someone over the Internet, they can't see your face to tell if you're teasing them or saying something in jest. How do you practice good Netiquette? It's simple ÿfd just treat others as you want to be treated ÿfd with courtesy and respect. People know these rules but usually do not follow them when using the Internet. This includes hacking others computer, downloading illegally, plagiarism, and using bad language on the Internet.

• An individual who is information literate is able to:

   
   
  • Determine the extent of information needed
   
  • Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
   
  • Evaluate information and its sources critically
   
  • Incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base
   
  • Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
   
  • Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally (1)
• Information literacy is, therefore, being able to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (1). Computer literacy involves gaining familiarity with hardware, software applications, and databases as well as an understanding of how technology works. Developing computer literacy is necessary in order to become information literate, as information technology has become an integral part of obtaining access to information and managing it. However, learning critical thinking skills - comprehension, analysis, application, synthesis, and evaluation - is what distinguishes information literacy from the "fluency with technology" that comes with computer literacy.

• 1. Information literacy is the ability to recognize the extent and nature of an information need, then to locate, evaluate, and effectively use the needed information. (Plattsburgh State Information and Computer Literacy Task Force, 2001)
  
  2. An information literate Plattsburgh State graduate will be able to recognize when information is needed, and to locate, evaluate, effectively use, and understand ethical issues related to information in its various formats. This definition of information literacy conforms to the Information Literacy Initiative Committee of the SUNY Council of Library Directors, and the ALA definition, as well as that found in the Middle States Standards for Accreditation. (Plattsburgh State Library Faculty)

• Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.
• Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.

• collaborative software

  Software that allows people to work together on the same documents and projects over local and remote networks. Lotus Notes is considered the father of "groupware," which was the first term coined to describe collaborative software. Also called "social software," collaborative software embraces the communications systems as well, including e-mail, videoconferencing, instant messaging and chat. See groupware, application sharing, wiki, e-mail, instant messaging, chat, blog, data conferencing and videoconferencing.