PB Works version 1.0

PBWorks is a very good online social collaboration tool. For instance, we can use PBworks to collaborate on working on different projects. PBWorks fit business, education and personal purpose.

PBWorks is one of social network collaboration tools.

Unlike Blog, PBworks allows more effective collaboration in timely manner. Blog is dead and comments are dead and dry like web board because blog is static whereas PBworks allows more lively information input in the front page. Comparing facebook and twitter to PBWorks, PBworks lacks some aspects of social media integration to fan club or to events arranged. However, PBWorks help people work on collaboration with various tools such as on editing page, PBWorks has tools which you can edit word, link to HTML, link to youtube, create table,etc. Looking into facebook and twitter, yes those social media brainstorms ideas but the fact that they have no extra tools on keeping collaboration and comments, we can not create identity of tasks to do on facebook or twitter. With PBWorks, you can use edit menu to edit papers together, to create topics/sub topics for discussions, etc in organized ways which facebook and twitter can not do. You can not create aligned organized piece of work on facebook. Facing140 letters, twitter can not do much more than posting direct marketing and linking to specific websites or youtube vdo.

For Business side, after downloading business version of PBWorksto use, I realize that there are many benefits of using PBworks.

First is the online real time chat like skype or MSN chat which helps people collaborate better and effectively; the real time chat help me get immediate feedback. If you compare PBWorks to wavenet, Pepperdine Wavenet also has a chat room which is great but I believe it is better if chatroom is built like facebook chat or PBworks chat. With window on right side, chat will work better than wavenet putting chat in the room. But, that’s just my opinion.

Second is the project management dates which allow people/ collaborators to update the due dates of projects and tasks. Although there is not grant chart / bar chart to see due dates. With PBworks business version, you see due dates of each tasks. So, every collaborator knows what tasks are done. Comparing wavenet, wavenet does not have tasks arranged by due dates. So, students can not keep track of their tasks in very detailed forms.

Third is the calendar which we can tie back to outlook and google calendar. With PBWorks business edition, calendar is linked /updated to outlook and google calendars.

As for PBWorks education version, which was the one we used in class. I believe that PBWorks is very effective collaboration tool for students working together on a piece of project. Students can work with teachers and vice versa. Students can work on creating a report by putting images, text file, PPT file, excel file, word file, etc. Not only reports which can be created, some brainstormings on certain topics can be done as a test bed. Basically for brainstorming on idea or for producing reports students can create reports together by putting all files each individual has and link all files to front page. By creating front page and link,it is easier for everyone to read and to comment on each topic without headche.If you go to website, and you see web board, sometimes you are just really tired to see where to comments. With PBworks education version, life is easier once it comes to comment.

In addition, students can edit work together to create any work. The good aspect of PBworks is that everyone who goes to comment/edit whereas Microsoft word is more confusing once it comes to many revised edits by too many people.
In this regard, PBworks is doing better job. But, I would think PBWorks should have track change feature of MS word and time of track change needs to be monitor.
Also, with more complicated edits on big paper, PBworks help students do work more effectively than google doc.Google Doc is for documenting whereas features of PBWorks allow us to do more than Google’s editing and storing files in folders. PBworks help students really work together. Power of learning is enhanced on the fact that they can share ideas, mark ideas and edit ideas.

The fact that there is a front page on PBWorks helps us navigate to the whole work for edit. Unlike microsoft word and google doc,PBWorks has been equipped with navigation system. By clicking at front page, we are navigating into different documents in different folders. That makes students’ life easier.

In addition to basic edit features, Students can build their own person pages with embedded images, youtube video, slideshare, vimeo,etc. Students are encouraged to participate more when they see other students participating. With VDO, images, slideshare, RSS, etc in page edit feature, students can create more useful presentation based on those information/ resources retrieved from other sources.

The fact that PBWorks has e-mail alert to their mail box, students will feel more motivated to learn and to participate. It is hard not to partcipate when you see other students partcipate too. Especially when it comes to footnote at the page document PBWorks help students write report with footnote references.

The dark sides of PBWorks education version are as follows:
1) PBworks does not link to Mindmap. With mindmap embedded, students can create more brainstorming. I believe that by creating mindmap before, a paper or an idea is better constructed than to write whatever in each file.

2) PBworks does not link to MS Project. Maybe if PBworks can be linked to MSProject, it will be great. Just imagine if we see grantt chart with PBworks linkage...Microsoft Project will be more fully effective. Because each task on MS project will show piece of brainstorm ideas ( or scratch paper on how they form idea).

3) PBworks needs to link to google docs. In order to retrieve document from google doc or dropbox, PBworks might be easier to upload or download data. Sometimes when people receive mail of document, they download to google doc. With PBworks' linkage to google doc, students do not need to spend time on attaching or loading files or texts on PBWorks. In other words, students need to store doc once in google doc or dropbox, and PBWorks just retrieve those doc to use. If you can think of how to install facebook application on facebook, PBWorks should be ready platform for any talk with other applications such as google doc, and drop box. Sometimes PBWorks should link with blogs to feed information from blog to use. Just imagine if there are some people who love to write blogs, they are very lazy to write again on PBWorks. It will be great if PBWorks can feed blog as RSS or feed texts in the ways that collaborators see it clearly. Let’s put it this way. Blog should be imported to PBworks workspace.

4) PBworks should link to google calendar, outlook calendar, and apple calendar. Maybe if there is an option to link with calendar, students / collaborators can collaborate more. Most of the time people put their calendar by using those google calendar, outlook, apple, etc. So, it might be great if PBworks can link to those items. To make people coordinate effectively, personal calendars from google calendar, outook, apple, etc should be fed to PBWorks.

5) When we want to edit page, we can not put javascript or any too long complicated HTML script to embed on edit page so with these constraints, PBWorks' usefulness is limited. For instance, when I visited web page like VIMEO, Youtube, etc, I could embed source. But, when I try to embed javascript clock or embed some social media gadgets by embedding those long HTML and Javascript code, it did not let me to. I tried many times to embed code from http://www.docstoc.com/search/fashion-marketing?catfilter=1,

it just did not work. Or even when I want to embed code like google map code, facebook code, etc, it did not work at all.
Fortunately, I could embed youtube code, slideshare.net code, vimeo code, etc.

Please look at this page.
http://elearningpepp.pbworks.com/w/page/Copy-of-Benefits-of-WIKIS
If you see this page, you can see that I embed my photo from flickr.com, it works.
I embed source code from VIMEO and slideshare, they all work out.
So, there are some uncertainties on which codes PBWorks allow us to put there.
If in the future there are more source codes we can put, I am sure we will learn a lot more.