Thing #19

Seeing as how I like Awards shows, or rather, just seeing list of winners (must come from my athletic background as a coach), I had most fun at first just scrolling down and seeing the winners, and seeing if any of the ones we have gone over thus far were listed.

• Delicious was number one in both bookmarking and social news
• Google Earth was number 3 in maps
• Library Thing was honorable mention in Books

Its funny that Twitter has already overtaken Facebook for first place in social networking. I just never got into Twitter (I do have facebook profile, but I don't do much with that either). I don't see the point of letting people know what I'm doing every minute of every day that I feel like posting a status update.

Ok enough rambling, and on to the purpose of Thing 19. So I browsed through some of the award winners and chose to concentrate on .Docstoc which was number one under the category Education. I found this concept to be rather interesting. You can upload documents to it, so that others have access. Its a way of publishing information you want others to be able to refer to. Its basically like an online library of relevant documents, broken down into several categories. Want to find info on how to write a good college essay? They've got documents on that subject. I think this tool would be useful in a class setting, as students could upload their good works to be seen. Could also do a group project on a how-to type setting, and the students "publish" their final answers by uploading to this site.

Thing #18

I'm pretty much of mixed opinion regarding the online productivity tools. In this day and age, with so many people having laptops that already have microsoft office already installed, it seems like overkill to have Open Office as well as any of the MS Office applications.

(I don't like the fact that you have to register for googledoc as that just seems a way for them to include your email in their mailing lists and send more spam mail crap, so I'm concentrating on Open Office)

I would say the main benefit is that you don't have to worry about which version to install on which computer, as its all the same. For instance Mac users, such as myself, wouldn't have to buy office for mac in order to be able to use this software. The fact that you have a large choice of application types to save documents as is also a benefit; for an executive in a foreign country without internet access, they could use this instead of MS Office if there was a glitch in MS Office software and weren't able to download patch or whatever.

I'm curious as to what Microsoft thinks about this. I'd think that software companies that feel truly threatened by this would work hard to discredit it. On other hand, maybe this creates good competition and forces them to come up with better innovations...

Bottom line, mixed feelings on this one.

Thing #17

Is it just me, or does the concept of Rollyo seem somewhat similar to Technorati (Thing 9). They both have to do with setting up way to find information relevant quickly. But I digress...

Rollyo is an interesting concept, and I enjoyed being able to set up a custom search with info my students in a personal finance class could use. It is rather easy: just open up another window, and google search for sites relevant to what you want, then copy and paste the URL into the Rollyo search creator window.

In order to be able to post the link, I registered with Rollyo. Here is the link to the search I created.:

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=Search+for...&sid=569896&url=rollyo.com&rollbar=1

Thing #16

I think Wiki's can be good if monitored efficiently. The main thing students need to be aware of is that since anyone can join a wiki and post information, its always smart to check the information gleaned to make sure its correct. How many of us have found wrong information on Wikipedia? Yet students take whatever they find online as gospel. (To be fair, its not just wiki's that can be wrong; any information on internet has potential to be wrong, so we need to make sure students understand that).

I think libraries and schools can make good use of wikis, especially on large school/class wide research projects, where all students have a hand in the final product. A wiki can be used so students can post their info and update what they find, and learn from each other.

FYI, when I posted to the sandbox as per the instructions for this Thing, I followed the directions literally: it said to choose one of your favorite curriculum ideas from blog and copy and paste, so I copied and pasted about RSS feeders.

Thing #15

I have seen this video before, and totally agree with it. Heck, I'm just like the students in there, as I would be in large classes doing things that had nothing to do with the class I was in. In this day and age, teachers need to realize what the kids of today have at their disposal and that the teacher needs to change their approach if they want to grab the attention of the student. The profs in college that actually kept my attention were the ones that didn't adhere to the old model of "I will stand up here and talk for an hour while you take copious notes", rather they engaged us regularly in discussion or debate.

The thing that stuck out most to me in all the discovery resources was the iceberg article. Library 2.0 to me means that we no longer should depend on just books or magazines. Heck, a good example is the process of textbook adoption: it takes a couple of years for a new edition to be approved, by that time the information can be out-dated, and they have to start all over again. Why use text when same information, only in different formats, can be available online. I think that for libraries to continue being relevant, they need to get away from dependence on just books and magazines, and to utilize the web much more. Kids need to see that there is a lot more than just Facebook or gaming sites online.

I finish this post with the following quote I remember the most from high school english, from Thoreau: " The more you know, the more you know the less you know"

Thing #14

Technorati seems to be a good way to get blog more "screen time" for lack of better term. In other words, more people are likely to see it. I think it would help students to a degree to view technorati, as it would be a good research tool to have them look for blogs on say, advances in technology for a computer class.

However, one thing to possibly be aware of is use of misleading tags. I can see someone wanting to get their social blog noticed more, and using a tag to try to have their blog show up in different searches. (much like all those spam mails that come through with subject lines that have NOTHING to do with what the email is actually trying to sell you, they are just trying to get you to open it up).

So, to sum up: tagging is good, and can assist greatly in research, but only if done in good faith.

Thing #13

I think Delicious (and other social bookmarking sites as well) has great potential for research assistance, especially early on in the process. When students get to point in the research process where they are brainstorming and looking for potential sources, they can use tags to help organize their sources.

(Sidenote: I myself always felt more comfortable getting my potential sources down first before going back and looking in depth at those resources, instead of going one by one; it just seemed to help my future paper take shape early on. I would have loved having this back in my student days!)

Yes, social bookmarking sites are of course also an easy way to just create bookmarks from anywhere. However, I think that teachers can utilize these by having their students come up with a topic first, and then use these to help them find sites that would help them in their research. (if we just tell them to go to, say Delicious, and find sites they can tag, they would most likely just end up tagging facebook pages and other things not relevant to anything educational!). As long as we have them come up with a purpose first, these sites can greatly help them in the learning and research process.