Web 2.0 strategies for Canvas site

Including web 2.0 tools to the Canvas website I feel will be extremely important to the site. Web 2.0 encourages interactivity and community, which I feel is important for any website and in particular a student website.
Our aim as a group was to create a website that would both engage and involve its users, but most importantly our aim was to create a site that was student focused and able to provide students with what they want. Alongside many other attributes that we will include to the site, including a variety of web 2.0 tools will in my opinion help us in fulfilling our aims for the site.

Here is a list of web 2.0 tools I think would be beneficial for the Canvas online site.

Flash: I think we can use this particular tool to add a sense of character to our page. Flash images or words grab readers attention, it is a more fun and entertaining way of presenting something. Although if we do use it, it is important that we do not over do it, too much flash can become distracting and rather annoying.

Comment boxes: This is a good tool to use because it allows for interactivity, which is important for a student site, as it is important to get students involved. The print publication of Canvas can of course not offer that much interactivity because it is not as fast, expedient or as instant as the web, which is why it is so important that we take full advantage of the opportunity to get readers involved. However, we will have to be extra cautious, as there is the possibility of people posting things of an offensive nature. To overcome this problem I think it is important that we make people fill in a form detailing their name and age and email address etc to before they are able to leave comments. Also we should include a word limit of around 1000 words per comment. All this will help in preventing people posting things that are unacceptable. However, we will still most likely need to have someone that frequently checks the comments.

RSS feeds: Again this would be a useful tool because it allows for viewers to be particular about what news that want. RSS feeds keep readers regularly updated with new news headlines and news stories, ensuring that they are always well informed. Therefore people will always be linked to with our site.
However, because our site is most likely to be updated weekly this tool may not be as much an essential as the others because of there will not enough new information being provided as there would have been had it been updated daily. If we do include them however, it is important that we ensure that the RSS feed icons are easily identifiable and easily accessible.

Search engines: This would be a good tool as it could help in navigating people around the site and to related articles. However, installing this tool could prove difficult and it is important that it doesn’t steer traffic from our site to another.

Social book marking: Although a very useful web 2.0 tool I don’t feel that it is essential that we provide it for our users. This is because the main users of our sites will be students who mainly just want to read the latest student news, features etc and leave comments. I don’t personally think they would find the time or even be bothered to post these articles to del.io.ous, Newsvine etc.

Multi-media: Including a vast amount of multi-media is a must. To help keep our audience engaged it is important that we present them with information in different ways, bog standard text can become very daunting. By adding a bit of variety to the way in which we present content will help in keeping our audience engaged.

Blogs: This is again another tool that I feel will be extremely beneficial but also successful on our Canvas website. Blogging allows for interactivity and the building of a community, which is what we want to be able to provide through our site.

An idea for a blog that I had in mind and think would be good to repurpose for the Canvas website would be the Chat back Jack column, which is a column written by a student journalist discussing issues related to society, politics and even art and culture.
Similar to the above idea I though we could also do an opinion blog that discusses recent issues featured on the website or in the paper from each different section. I believe that both these ideas would work successfully because people like to hear other people’s opinion. It sparks debates, which leads to more interactivity, if people read another persons opinion they are more likely to leave comments giving their opinion.
It would also be good if like many other newspaper websites we could allow for frequent subscribers to start their own blogs, where they could give their thoughts on topical events, although we would have to be extremely weary for any offensive activity.
There are many topics that we could have more specific blogs on which may not be one of the five sections we have included on our site such. For example we could do a blog on fashion, football, TV and show biz, the union etc. This would work because these are all topics that students would be interested in and also because there is always so much to discuss within these topics. It is important that we don’t choose to do a blog on a topic that will lack in content further down the line.
For our blogs I feel that it is important that we include Navigation is provided by author, category, and chronologically to our blogs as well as, enabling RSS feeds. I also think its important that all of Canvas’ blogging areas allow user comments.