Links and Things: Web2.0 Links

Image via CrunchBase

• Diigo Blog » Announcing “Diigo Educator Accounts”

  Today, we are happy to announce the release of Diigo Educator Accounts, a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.

  tags: diigo, education, tools, socialbookmarking, teaching, socialnetworking, web2.0, ideas, app, technology

• popacular – popular delicious bookmarks

  tags: delicious, bookmarks, rating, web2.0, app, ideas, technology

• Twingr.com

  “Twingr is a brand new startup which essentially lets you create your own microblogging community. The site slots directly in with the continuing craze for microblogs and lifestreaming, and ways to make a viable business out of the two.” – http://cli.gs/QXdj13

  tags: microblogging, twitter, web2.0, app, ideas, technology

• tarpipe

  tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications

  tags: mashup, Web2.0, share, evernote, tarpipe, web2.0, app, ideas, technology

• Escape Your Email At Last (Really!) With AwayFind – ReadWriteWeb

  “AwayFind is an auto-responder on steroids.”
  “It lets you step away from your email without missing the most important messages – the so-called “email emergencies.” That addresses one of people’s deep-seated fears of email abandonment – the fear that some piece of critical information is going to arrive and we’re not going to see it.” -ReadWriteWeb

  tags: web2.0, app, ideas, email, organization, powermanagement, spam

• Visualize Your Bookmarks With Tidy Favorites – ReadWriteWeb

  personal, private bookmarking never really went away because, face it, there are some links that don’t need to be shared. For those links, a service called Tidy Favorites delivers an innovative new way to work with your bookmarks using an intuitive visual search engine and dashboard.
  Your Un-Social Bookmarks

  tags: web2.0, app, ideas, socialbookmarking, bookmarking, bookmarks, software

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Student-Teacher Collaboration: Feedback Please!

I hate the traditional classroom
“Students have little input into the structure and substance of their own education. The traditional classroom lecture creates massive boredom, especially when compared to the vibrancy of their media-saturated, tech-driven world. But if we were to ask them, we’d learn they prefer questions rather than answers, sharing their opinions, group projects, working with real-world issues, and teachers who speak with them as equals rather than as inferiors.”
Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner

I love the idea of students participating in the curriculum design. I would love to collaborate with them on how they learn best and how to incorporate technology in the course work. I especially excited about the concept of students creating content instead of just being force feed content. I know that most of my students have books they will hardly, if ever, read. I believe that a student buys a set of books they don’t open and have no participation in the content they receive then they have wasted their time and money.

I believe in integrating technology into the curriculum. I believe that students should participate in creating content as well as participating in existing content. I believe that students should use and/or become familiar with I am using wikis, Google docs, twitter, Diigo, Blogs, Friendfeed among other tools to reach these ends.

I am a strong advocate of collaboration. I believe that students should work together in teams. I believe in project based learning. I think students should have real world exercises to work with. I don’t believe in exercises in a vacuum. I believe that working on a project is the best way to make sense of the technology they want to learn.

I am not doing something right…

I am not getting feedback. I cannot seem to find a way to talk to the students about how they would like to learn. I would like to know what I can do with the students. I could chuck the whole curriculum as it stands and rebuild it if we could work something out. I would love to have the input. I would love to find out what would help them learn the best and find a way to work with them to make it work.

I have some how built a barrier between me and my students. The feedback I get usually comes from the top down and is usually very vague. They seem to feel like they need to address their issues with someone else. I haven’t done right by them somehow. It is very disheartening.

So now I am asking the void: What do you suggest I do to get it right? What have you tried that has worked? What am I missing?

I would like to recommend vi.sualize.us but I can’t

Vi.sualize.us is a photo bookmarking service. I don’t have as many photos to publish (via flickr.com) as much as I have photos I have found. If I have found a picture on the web I want to share I can either use the vi.sualize.us bookmarklet or Firefox extension and point friends and students there.

Unfortunately the site is relatively new and the “safe filter” isn’t quite up to snuff. Even so the “nude” tag is always on the front page. Finding similar material on flickr is more difficult and 72photos even more so. I believe the nature of the site and the ease of the tools to just point and click make it more susceptible to this kind of abuse. I don’t have numbers or statistics to show it. Just my best guess.

It is a shame really. The same reasons it is abused are the same reasons I like the service. It is so easy to pick out pictures on the web and point my students towards them. I have sidestepped this a bit by using their embedded widget but the trouble is still a link away.

The internet is full of crap and I would be naive to think my students avoid it. I just can’t recommend vi.sualize.us. I can’t use flickr either. I am still searching for a solution.

What is a bookmark?

I have been working at catching up on web 2.0 bookmarks that might have some impact in the classroom. I have been following some RSS feeds with del.icio.us/web2.0 the most prominent. I have also twittered about some of the more interesting ones to my friends and followers. I am beginning to notice that I am making a distinction between what I bookmark and what I twitter about. I am beginning to wonder what I really need to bookmark.

I am beginning to believe that bookmarks should only be for resources. College Degrees has a new post on getting more out of the Amazon Kindle. The link is a resource. It is a resource because it helps find other tools or resources that some one can use to do things with.

This story about students teaching students is not a resource in the same manner that the College Degrees article is. The article tells a story about reading strategies and the plan they developed. This is a resource because the plan is something that can be used. It is a resource because it spawns new ideas that would not otherwise be considered. It could also be called a topic.

I am beginning to believe that bookmarking shouldn’t be used for marking events. This article about the availability of Firefox 3.0 downloads seems more of an event. An event is like a news or social blog item rather than something to bookmark.

This article about the end of the XP era and whether Visa can step up appears to be an event. This is news because very soon the article will become irrelevant. So much so that I believe that is the intent of the article. It is an item to flare up some readers to comment. It is doing a find job as it has over 780 comments by the time I finished this post.

Should events be “bookmarked” differently from resources? Should they be “bookmarked” differently with the same bookmarking tool or a another one?

Our class is currently using diigo for our chief bookmarking
tool. We also use twitter. Can another service, like newsvine or maybe Digg, can effectively be used to “bookmark” events? What other tools could we use to more effectively?

The issue in the classroom is introducing another layer of complexity. Should I attempt to make a distinction between a resource and a bookmark? Can I do it in a way that my students can understand when I am not quite clear myself? Do I dare suggest another web 2.0 tool while they are just getting to know the ones I have already suggested? Is twitter enough?

I would appreciate your help and comments.

Reply to: How Many Friends is Too Many? – ReadWriteWeb

My post in reply to: How Many Friends is Too Many? – ReadWriteWeb

Can you call them friends or contacts? In this scenario it is better to call them contacts. Linkedin for example is not a site I use to find out what my friends are doing. I use Facebook for keeping up with friends. If you have over 10 or 15 friends in Facebook are you then using Facebook like Linkedin or more like an RSS feed about people you know, once new and are networking with. Facebook might better be considered a linkedin with non-business and/or non-work related contacts in a scenario with many friends.

Facebook for dummies mentioned that it is a way to keep in contact with friends and family regardless of changes in address, telephone numbers, email addresses, or career changes. Facebook is kind or an Outlook (or other MS hater contacts manager that keeps notifying you of your friends status, location, and updated contacts.

Social Bookmarking Madness

Just how many social bookmarking apps are out there and how many do we really need?

socialmarker proudly boast that it supports 47 bookmarking services. 47. Its is a miracle that they found a way get it done. Aggregating other parts of the lifestream seems to be difficult.

I was of the opinion that social bookmarking was a niche in the web 2.0 toolkit. socialmarker demonstrates that social bookmarking isn’t so much a niche anymore. Now social bookmarking has niches. (Niching niche niches?). You should be familiar with del.icio.us and maybe Google Bookmarks. I may be back in the social bookmarking stone age but I didn’t even have a clue that Ximmy and Bibonomy were even services.

Social bookmarks definitely have a place in the toolbox of the digital learner. It is quite possibly the one tool that is the easiest to justify in the classroom. How many college instructors haven’t either handed out a hyper link to a student to research a topic? How many papers are submitted to instructors without a reference to a website within the last year? How many students have struggled with keeping up with their bookmarks and sharing with their friends?

A shared social bookmarking site makes more sense than a wiki or blog. socialmarker brings into question the value of social bookmarking by offering more options than answers. An instructor considering using a web 2.0 tool in there curriculum may make the most sense but the sheer number of options could steer the timid away from web 2.0 altogether. After all, if making a decision about social bookmarking is this difficult then what about other web 2.0 apps?

It could be argued that Del.icio.us is the best social bookmarking tool. Digg must be considered as a viable option. Ma.gnolia.com and Furl should at least get honorable mention. (Ma.gnolia.com did’t make the socialmarker cut but OYAX did?) But within a breath, or at least this paragraph, there are 4 different answers which by no means should be considered definitive.

It comes down to research, commitment and a plan. An Instructor must consider the role social bookmarking will have in the curriculum in the first place. Develop a plan of how social media will be used in the classroom. Consult the student body to see which social bookmarking tool is the most useful. Commit to the research and the decision. A hasty decision could have disastrous consequences when making future decisions about web 2.0 and social networking tools in the future.

Plan and plan on using it. The students already are.