Social Bookmarking

I've seen these links around for digg and delicious but never really put much thought into them (like a lot of things that I am just learning about now!).  Just reading through one of my MA books on the weekend, by Will Richardson, and wow the stuff you can do with them is amazing.  They are primarily a site where you can store links, webpages and bookmarks but you also tag these pages as you save them, meaning you can see what other people have tagged with something similar.  Diggo archives the webpage, meaning if it gets deleted you have a copy of it, and allows you to annotate the page for others to see!  Delicious is a little simpler but probably easier to use.

Need to test out the filter settings at school...

Rethinking education

Ok, this is an amazing idea, also from Alec.  In this day and age of digital media, why not simply record all your lessons/lectures and set them for your students to watch and work on as homework?  Then you can use your face-to-face time in class to discuss, clear up misunderstandings and work with individuals.

I can see a few problems in making this work, but talk about turning education on its head!

More free stuff

Watching presentations by people who know their stuff way more than I do is an education.  In a few minutes of video, I'm introduced to half a dozen websites, each of which probably has enough content on it to keep me occupied for a year!  Today's pick are as follows, thanks to Alec from Open Thinking:

Creative Commons is an amazing website that is pushing the boundaries of copyrighting.  Basically you are invited to share any information that you own the copyright to, along with restrictions on how you want it to be used.  Anybody else is then allowed access to that information, providing they agree to follow your restrictions.

Free Video Lectures is a website in progress that has exactly what it says, video lectures on all manner of topics.  There's a few ads on there though.

Google is obvious, but have you ever checked through the options at the top to see what they offer you?  From slices of academic books, to RSS webfeeds, to this blog itself, to the iGoogle homepage there's enough there to keep you amused for weeks.

R

Free stuff

It's always amazed me how much out there is open-source, however it's only in the last few months that I've really come to realise the sheer depth and variety of what people, companies and organisations put on the internet for free.  Lets start with RSS, since that's my latest conversion.  Instead of going to every single website that you like and checking it for updates, you can subscribe to a RSS feed which then brings every update straight to your reader.  You'd expect this service to cost a pretty penny, given the time that it saves you, but in actual fact there are plenty of free readers out there.  The one I've started using is Google Reader, and I'm really enjoying it so far.  The added advantage is of course that, like all Google services, all you need is a way in to the internet and your username and password.  For somebody like me, who changes computers many times in one day, this is invaluable!  It's working great with things like blogs so far, but I'm not sure if it will have the same effect on academic journals and the like, which you require a username to access.  Only one way to find out!

First!

Greetings Internet. I have been thinking about how to keep a record of my research into ICT in Education, and having read so much about blogs and blogging I thought I'd give this a go.  This may be my last post ever (particularly if school don't unblock Blogger) but it may also end up being an excellent record and research tool.  Only time will tell.

R