If you're following along on the original "13 Things" list, you may notice we're jumping ahead this week. Originally, RSS Feeds were scheduled as our Thing 9. I'm moving that back a few things because Google is working on releasing Google Reader as an educational app. What does this mean for us? It means we can use the Google Reader to grab RSS feeds using our Coe email accounts. If this still means nothing...just wait and I'll explain it all in a few weeks!
Thing 9: Online Books/Book Cataloguing (Week of July 26-30)
This "Thing" is more for fun and for personal use, but you may find that it has potential for classroom use as well. If you're a reader, it's always a good idea to keep a list of what you've read so you can make recommendations, look for books by the same author, and well, because sometimes it's just fun to make lists. Several online book cataloguing sites have popped up in recent years, each of which allow you to create your own "book shelf", tag books, find forums to join, get recommendations, and see what other people are reading. Three of the most popular are GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing. For this Thing, you should visit each of these sites, take the tour or read the How It Works section, and choose one in which to create an account. Try adding 5-10 books, create tags for them, add them to the appropriate shelf, and anything else that strikes your fancy. I have an account on LibraryThing, username LisaWiebenga. Check me out! I also have added a gadget on the sidebar of this blog that shows random books from my LibraryThing (scroll down below the Blogroll).
Add book to the appropriate bookshelf (if applicable)
Post your username and which application you used
Post about your experiences using the application. Would you use this? How and why? Could you see any way to use this in a school setting?
For fun (optional):
Add a gadget to your blog displaying books from your account (each of the three applications has an option to get the code to embed onto your blog, website, etc.)
By now, the world knows YouTube as the source of all things video on the Internet. And I do mean “all things.” The good, the bad, and the ugly are all there for all to see.
Thing 8: Video (Week of July 19-25)
YouTube revolutionizes the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video.YouTube is now owned by Google, so it will be interesting to see the how the evolution/merging of the two sites happens. Right now, a search of either one returns results from both sites.
There are dozens of other video sites, but among the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day. For those who register for a free account, YouTube provides additional features turning it into a social networking service. These features include the ability to…
create a profile
customize your profile with favorites, playlists and subscriptions to channels & tags
upload & tag your videos
"friend" other YouTube users
send messages and even broadcast messages to all your YouTube friends
rate and add comments to videos
A social site like YouTube democratizes film making, the same way blogs democratize publishing. The videos vary in lenght (up to ten minutes) and run the gamut of subjects. You'll find personal rumblings, amateur TV shows, wedding videos and other personal videos people upload to share with family and friends. But you'll also find famous scenes from movies, music performances, vintage television advertising, videos of speeches by Nelson Mandala, Martin Luther King, Jr, and JFK, the first moon landing and animations of DNA replication.
For Thing 8, you will do some exploring in YouTube or Google Video. Find a video that relates to your personal interests or area of scholarship, or that simply appeals to your sense of humor.
Speaking of sense of humor:
Discovery Exercise:
Explore YouTube or Google Video & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog. Enter a keyword or words in the search box. After you find a video, you can learn more about it (including what tags it has) by click the little double-arrow icon directly below the video. This opens an area with more information.
On your blog: why did you choose this video? Have you used online videos in your classrooms or for your work before? Would you in the future? Have you uploaded any of your own videos to an online sharing site?
Yay! We're just past the half-way point in our 13 Things adventure. Boo! Summer is half-way gone.
Thing 7: Social Bookmarking (week of July 12-18)
The next Thing we'll be looking at is social bookmarking using Delicious, which will help you organize all of your favorite websites.
Watch this explanation from Common Craft and then sign up for a Delicious account.When you first look at Delicious, check out some of the "Fresh Bookmarks" and "Popular Bookmarks" to see how they have been tagged.
Once you've created a Delicious account, add and tag some of your favorite websites. Post your Delicious username on your blog (mine is lisa.wiebenga), then, once other people have started posting their Delicious usernames, add a few of your colleagues to your network. You can add me first just to see how it works. When you're finished, create a post and reflect on your Delicious experience. Do you see this as a useful tool? Would you actually use this? How could it be helpful in a school setting? If you already use one of the other social bookmarking sites, feel free to share that and your thoughts about it rather than create another account (but at least look at Delicious).
add me to your network (lisa.wiebenga), then add a few of your colleagues
Create a post about your experience AND post your Delicious username
Just for fun: Look at Stumbleupon; you don't have to create an account (unless you want to after learning more about it here), but this is an interesting way to see what the general public is discovering on the web. Click "Discover" and you'll see current sites getting top rankings. On the right-hand side you'll see a list of popular tags. Look around a bit and perhaps you'll find something exciting.
Diggo is another bookmarking site to check out. Diggo is quickly gaining popularity with new features like post-it notes and the ability to create thumbnails of saved link pages. Feel free to complete your discovery exercise using Diggo if you prefer.
Willie Nelson does it. Ellen does it. Your favorite NPR hosts do it, too! And now it's your turn. No longer is Twitter mainly used to let the world know what you had for breakfast: surgeons use it to instruct medical students and educate the public, politicians use it to update their constituents, the Red Cross uses it share emergency information and educational leaders use it to share new ideas and engage in dialogues with interested "followers."
Thing 6: Twitter (Week of July 5-9 if you're working by week!)
Read the article "Twittering, Not Frittering, Professional Development in 140 Characters" from Edutopia OR 10 High Fliers on Twitter from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and then create a Twitter account for yourself. If you're comfortable with this, set your account as "Public" (that way we can all find you on Twitter). If not, then you have to approve individual people to be your followers. Do a few Internet searches to find leaders in your area, and chances are that they will have a Twitter account (for example, I might search for leaders in the world of educational technology). "Follow" at least three of them, post your Twitter name to your blog (mine is lisawiestro), and then let us know who you're following.
In addition to following each of you, when you've got your Twitter accounts going, here is an example of some of the people I'm following:
David Warlick (a well known leader in ed tech)
Bryan Alexander (another ed tech guru, works for NITLE)
OnPointRadio (one of my fav NPR shows - people tweet questions, host Tom Ashbrook frequently reads comments and questions from real time tweeters)
Chronicle of Higher Education (tweets links to the major stories)
IADeptofEd
CoeBRAI (follows Coe's RAGBRAI group with daily updates from the road)
usedgov (US Department of Education)
Discovery Exercise
Create a Twitter account
Find at least 3 people to follow
Retweet a post or two from someone you're following
Post your Twitter name to your blog
Tell us who you're following
Reflect on your experience using/reading about Twitter. Do you think you would use Twitter? How could it be applied to an educational setting?
