Social Networks

This weeks task in Betty Blogger summer school is familiarization with Twitter. Well, for almost a year I have been tweeting fire safety messages on the Fire Department's Twitter account. I am still learning about Twitter as I was never exposed to this form of social media prior to the City taking on social media pilot project. I think it has been a very useful tool. It is great when posting pertinent information I would like to get out to the Burlington community especially when re tweeted by others with more reach in the community than I. I don't have any big concerns, however, it tends to be very one way communication. I, however, would not use for my own personal use. I am much too private to share information or personal thoughts. I do like it to be able to have access information which I believe is extremely important. One thing about Twitter, it would be nice to receive feedback from the community or questions that can be answered. Even with that limitation aside, Twitter is a excellent social network tool that will continue to be used. Perhaps Face Book would be able to fill in the gap where Twitter lacks....

Lisa

Tagging

Oh, boy, was this lesson ever a challenge! This week is learning how to use Diigo for tagging and bookmarking websites. I did not find it very user friendly to figure out how to go about bookmarking and wish the website had a better help menu. I really don't know or understand the value of this tool yet. I bookmarked two websites: Burlington Fire Department website and NFPA website. Tags used include: fire, department, burlington, safety, prevention.
I am really not sure I will continue to use Diigo outside of the Betty Blogger summer school, however, I will try it a few more times and see if it could provide value.
Lisa

Streaming

Week two in the Betty Blogger Summer School at the Burlington Public Library and on to Task #2 - Streaming. Now that this blog is set-up it looks like the task is to successfully link a YouTube video into the blog. It also appears that the learning goal in this exercise is to become familiar with YouTube. YouTube is a fun, informative and without a doubt, an entertaining platform for sharing media. YouTube streaming is popular for many reasons: it's visually appealing, it's on-demand meaning you can watch almost whatever you want when you want, videos are shared globally and accessible by almost everyone. Over the past few years the Burlington Fire Department has uploaded and selected to favourite many videos produced by the Office of the Fire Marshal, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and other organisations. These videos all share a similar theme; Fire and Life Safety. Just this morning for this exercise the Burlington Fire Department 'favourited' (is that really a word?) a preview video presented by NFPA. The video is for the 2011 Fire Prevention Week. Check it out here: http://youtu.be/tWYTkpHCE6E
Lisa

Betty Blogger Summer School

The Burlington Fire Department is taking great steps into using social media including blogging. On a scale of 1-10, my knowledge of Web 2.0 and its application is: 3 "web 2.novice". Over the next few weeks I'll be participating in Betty Blogger Summer School to learn about Web 2.0 and social software. Hopefully, with the help of Library Lady at the Burlington Public Library, we will learn how to blog and use other social media tools effectively to communicate and share fire safety information with the Burlington community.
Lisa
Public Education Officer