Google Reader beats everything so far

A couple of really interesting observations from my wanderings so far...

1.) Building up a skill base in Education Technology is a process. Everyday I am awed by references of people who have been using these "new" applications for years. I immediately feel realllllly behind and guilty that I was not more on top of my game. Then I interact with friends and colleagues whom I respect and mention anything web 2.0 and they immediately consider me some sort of Guru. Weird.

2.) Once I made the decision to jump in, the path has kind of opened up for me little by little. It always seems that I come across something just when I need it. More likely, it was always there and I just didn't pay it any mind until I had a use for it (Hopefully some people are finding this blog "just when they needed it").

So, here I am bookmarking everything in sight in Delicious and I realize that most of it is blog entries. I don't know much about blogs, but I figure if I find a person interesting enough to bookmark, I might like to keep current on their new blog postings. But, I know deep down, that the chances of remembering to keep checking that site for updates is slim to none.

This is the whole point of Google Reader!!!!

All you need is a Google account. Get one even if you don't want to switch over to Gmail (but I highly recommend you do) just to use all of the other cool stuff.

1.) Go to you Gmail inbox and look across the top. Click on Reader.

2.) This is where ALL the blogs you subscribe to are automatically kept up to date. It even indicates which blogs have NEW postings you haven't read yet. Click on the blog title to get a brief description. Click on the headline to get the full post.

This is where it gets REALLY cool...

You can manually subscribe to any blog you know the URL for

OR

This is called an RSS feed. The symbol looks like this:

As you are wandering around on the web, any place you see this symbol you can subscribe to that feed. Simply click on it, choose Google Reader from the list, and it is automatically added to your list. As an example, go the the New York Times and choose blogs from the column on the left. It takes you to over 50 feeds you can subscribe to based on your interests from food to politics. You will start to notice this symbol EVERYWHERE!

Now, I can literally be updated on 30 different blogs (friends, news, ed tech) by simply going to Google Reader after checking my email every day.

Delicious is Delicious

So, it didn't take long following cool people on Twitter to be to be inundated with numerous links to awesome stuff. Being the teacher that I am, my first instinct was to save them somewhere safe in case later I had the urge to share or revisit. Out of habit, I pulled down the bookmark menu and before I could even slide down to "add bookmark" I was struck by the chaos of my list. There were random links for kayak storage racks, algebra worksheets, and poems I had considered for my wedding. Yikes. Cleaning up this mess was going to be a major undertaking.

The next day on Twitter, someone randomly posted about Delicious.com which I vaguely remembered from MACUL (but didn't really retain it because I wasn't ready for it to be meaningful). Delicious is a web based bookmarking site (talk about good timing!). The one huge advantage I saw was the ability to access my bookmarks from ANY computer with internet access. Long gone were the days of having to re-find links at school!!!

So, it was a tedious day (like any cleaning project), but what a sense of peace at the end. I purged outdated materials, created my common "tags" and started labeling. Tags are definitely superior to folders because I can attach multiple tags to a website as needed. As a finishing touch, I marked my favorite tags to be displayed across the top of my browser for easy access.

I am slowly beginning to discover that there is more to Delicious than meets the eye. For example, I can:
1.) see how many other people have also bookmarked the same page (quality check)
2.) import pertinent bookmark lists from people I respect by adding them to my network**
3.) subscribe to popular bookmarks for a specific tag**
4.) send and receive bookmarks with other people**

**Frankly, even though I think these are great features that I will really appreciate one day, I got distracted by another web 2.0 application and haven't really given these a fair shake.

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

And if you are still skeptical as to why everyone is making such a fuss about Twitter, check out this article:

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

Then check out this real world application...

Math Help From Over 200 People

The Skinny on Twitter part 2

As is true with so much these days, your Twitter experience will only be as good as the people you choose to follow.

Using the same logic, this is made much more likely if you have a clear purpose behind who you decide to follow. It doesn't really matter if your a fan of Wii bowling or American Girl Dolls, if you find your niche, the posts will draw you in. I like to follow educators playing with technology. I was lucky enough early on to come across this very popular (in my niche) link:

100 Top Educators to Follow On Twitter

which seemed so perfectly concise and organized yet pretty overwhelming at the same time!

I decided a good strategy would be to follow 10 at a time. For whatever reason, I could not get the list to print, so I jotted down the first 10 names on paper and painstakingly use the "find people" option on Twitter to look them all up and start following (I was not feeling particularly techno saavy, but I achieved my goal).

After about a week of reading posts, I had a pretty good grasp of who did not meet my needs and needed to go....excessive posts, way too much tech lingo, etc. and weeded them out. I was now ready to look at the next 10, but I was sure there must be an easier way.

Looking back at the list, I now noticed there were many links to personal web sites I noticed a small link after each name (for example: 1. Bernie Dodge @berniedodge). Imagine my excitement when clicking it brought me straight to his Twitter page! You can immediately see how many people are following a person and read their last 20 posts. It gives you a great snapshot of how often they post and what they talk about. If it peaks your interest, simply click to follow.

So, at this point, I am still using the list to build up my following. I have also noticed that those little @name links show up alot in posts. If someone I enjoy following links to a certain name often, I figure they must be pretty cool to and I follow them by association. I really am beginning to feel like such a follower :)

One last note, I have noticed that during certain conferences, lots of ed tech people get REALLY exicted and use Twitter more like a CB radio. No worries, they calm down eventually.

The Skinny on Twitter part 1

The most wonderful thing about Twitter is the absolute lack of guilt. There is absolutely NO obligation to follow anyone who is following you. I can start and stop following people at will...and I do...often.

The most unnerving thing about Twitter is the format. Since you only get 140 characters to spit out whatever is on your mind, people get pretty creative. Luckily some standards have developed that make sense, but look crazy at first.

1.) if the post begins with RT simply means they are retweeting something interesting they saw for their followers.
2.) if the post begins with @name that means that they are direct tweeting with one other person. Since you don't get the whole conversation, these usually make no sense at all.
3.) if you see a #word that means they have tagged a word in the post. I don't know exactly what you can do later with these tags (yet).

Right now, I am considered a "Lurker" because I just look around at other people's posts and don't say much. I look for posts with links to other sites. I have wandered my way into many cool video clips, articles, and blogs this way. Lots of things out there to get the brain churning about education!

My goal is to become become an active Twitterer by the end of the summer. This is out of my comfort zone, but to summarize something I recently found by Twitter: the whole point of social networking is to interact with new people in a new way. So go big or go home!

Here is a good Twitter Resource. If you scroll all the way down past the glossary, it shows some common protocols for all social networking.

twictionary.pbworks.com/

Now what?

So there I was, all inspired, but with no idea of what to do next (at least I was about to spend two days learning about technology). I decided to choose my break out sessions like a kid and only wend to ones that sounded FUN. If I walked into one and didn't like it, I simply left and found a better one. Well, my strategy worked fabulously and I saw so much cool stuff that I got a bit overwhelmed. Luckily, I took voracious notes and still look back at them.

My absolute favorite was a session by Steve Dembo called "Extreme Makeover: Education Edition". Looking back, I definately consider him my first educational technology mentor. He works for Discovery Dducation and basically tells teachers about websites with super sweet (and free) applications beyond passivley looking up stuff (a.k.a web 2.0).

Just for a sample try out some of this fun:
www.crappygraphs.com
When you just need a simple graph to make a point

blabberize.com
Take any photo or clip are and make it talk like those babies on tv

edublogs.org Want to try a blog with students but need full access controling what gets posted before even considering it?

The most useful part at the time was the discussion on the purpose of different social networks. He suggested keeping Facebook for personal and Twitter for professional use and I wholeheartedly agree. He suggested following between 20-40 people and gave some names to start with like Leslie Fischer, Bernie Dodge, and Steve Dembo (of course). I went home and immediately opened my Twitter account.

How it all started...

After teaching for 12 years, I was pretty proud of my accomplishments. I had found a home in a challenging school with a high at risk population teaching first science and, most recently, algebra. I had completed a master's degree in Educational Leadership and was content working towards the school's vision on the school improvement and curriculum teams as the math teacher leader. I was taking online classes and continuously learning new ways to integrate graphing calculator and smartboard technology into my lessons. In short, I felt that I was "ahead of the game" in terms of expanding my discipline. Then I went to the MACUL conference last February......

MACUL is short for Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning. I was captivated by the end of the opening keynote address by Alan November. He handed out clickers and had 1800 teachers text the most common word students use to describe school. BORING was the overwhelming choice.....by TEACHERS...who have opted to attend a technology conference!!! I can only conclude, being the logical person that I am, that while most teachers are very excited by new technology, the student experience has remained relatively unchanged.

At that moment my ultimate educational goal became:

To use technology to change the STUDENT experience (and as long as you are doing that, you might as well make the new experience meaningful by incorporating it into the global perspective).

www.macul.org