Social Networking at Work?

Should businesses allow employees to access social networking tools during work hours? I would agree with Boulton that organizations can successfully use these tools. Implementation of policies based on trust while informing employees about online community including negative and positive behaviors associated with community assist with productive use of the tools. Behavior guidelines can be developed and explained to employees to further improve the behavior in social networking environments.

Organizations and employees need to be aware of the impacts of these tools on the company’s network bandwidth, productivity, and company reputation. One prediction is that social networking tools will be necessary to maintain a competitive edge in business. I personally believe this is true after instructing and observing high school students recently.

Reference

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Gartner-Analysts-Decry-Facebook-Twitter-Bans-at-Work/?kc=EWWHNEMNL081408STR1

More Web 2.0 Tools

Since the residency, I’ve worked with Second Life virtual world, blogging, online mind mapping, and Audacity for podcasting. My work requires me to use meeting software at least four times per month. I see the expanded tools SL offers over meeting software (e.g., Elluminate and Connect). From my experience learning new applications and teaching applications to other people, I can’t say the learning curve to effectively use functions in SL such as navigating and changing avatar appearance is worth the effort.

The blogging requirement on blogspot is giving me a reason to become comfortable with the tool. Posting comments like those in my blog for the world to read still makes me uncomfortable.

My first adventure with mind mapping occurred with Mindmeister. The application reminds me of other diagramming software. The sharing capability is beneficial and saves sending the file via email or using a document sharing portal. A sample image I created from Mindmeister is Student Portal that was original created with one account and revised as a shared image from another account.

Creating a podcast is new to me though I’ve known about the ability from peers. Audacity is the application I decided to try out for recording. I found the application easy to work with but am disappointed to have it generate errors and close periodically as I edited my audio file.

My adventure with Web 2.0 tools continues…