Saturday, 6 February 2010

My newly discovered resources (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Posted by Ali Hall at 4:31 PM 0 comments

Saturday, 16 January 2010

My newly discovered resources (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Posted by Ali Hall at 4:31 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

Blogs I follow

Wow, this challenge was harder than I thought it was going to be. I am glad I have done it though. It has made me review the blogs that I follow and I have to admit I had a bit of a cull but I probably have more idea now of why I follow the blogs that I do.

The other thing this challenge has made me realise is that I follow all of these blogs and probably not one of them knows that I do! Why? because I haven't been brave enough to comment on any of them. I will have to change that. maybe it can be one of my personal challenges after the blogfest has run it's course?

On to Task #4: Following Blogs.

How do I keep track of all the blogs that I follow? I use Flock which has an inbuilt RSS reader and also allows you to keep track of the activity on your social networks. The RSS reader allows me organise the feeds from the blogs that I follow into collapsible folders. it also lets me know when there are new posts to read. You can then choose to read the post via the RSS feed or visit the site. The other REALLY handy thing about Flock is that when I am visiting a blog RSS feeds are automatically detected. An orange button next to the URL lights up and when you click on it, it takes you to a feed page with a 'subscribe' button that you can drag into your RSS feed folders. It is really easy to use.

If the blog is on blogger then I use the Followers block rather than my RSS reader in Flock. This means that when I sign into my dashboard in blogger, I see the latest posts from the blogs that I am following and can also manage them. I found the Followers block really helpful when I was participating in the 365 Photo challenge in 2009. It helped me stay update with viewing the other participant's blogs and I was also able to broaden the network of blogs that I followed by discovering new blogs through it.

What blogs to I follow and why (in no particular order):

Literacy, families & learning
http://trevorcairney.blogspot.com/
In Trevor's own words "This blog aims to provide practical, timely and sound support and advice for parents, teachers and teachers in training." Trevor Cairney is Master of New College and Adjunct Professor of Education at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Trevor's blog offers practical information on activities to do in the classroom and I like it because he is not focussed on new online tools. Instead he uses an online tool to describe and share his experiences of real life teaching situations. In that way it is very refreshing :)

Successful teaching
http://successfulteaching.blogspot.com/
The author of this blog is Pat Hensley who for 30 odd years taught special education in the public school system of America. She now teaches graduate courses as an adjunct instructor for Furman University.

The Clever Sheep
http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/
Rodd Lucier is the Clever Sheep! He is a American teacher who uses media and ICT to engage his learners. I like some of Rodd's posts because he sometimes posts a video or audio clip to give his posts a little context. Some of the topics he blogs on go straight over my head so the media helps.


Birds Fly, Fish Swim
http://steveshann.wordpress.com/
This blog is written by an Australian English teacher, Steve Shann. Steve works in a Canberra secondary school and is also a convenor at the University of Canberra of a postgraduate course called 'Literacy across the curriculum'. I enjoy reading Steve's posts because I find them very "honest". Steve reflects on his successes and failures in the classroom and writes about them in his blog. When you read Steve's posts he lays all of his thinking bare and you go along for the ride as he reconstructs it to find a solution to his problem.

Brave New World
http://tsheko.wordpress.com/
Tania Sheko is a teacher librarian at Whitefriars College in Victoria. Her blog was started in 2008 as part of professional development discovering web 2.0 and it has just kept going.

2c worth
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/
David Warlick has been blogging since 2004 on his 2c Worth blog. David's blog "is a place where I record the thoughts and ideas that shape themselves in my head as I read, listen, talk, and observe. I write in this blog to have my ideas criticized, deconstructed, recombined, added to, and, when possible, to be used.". He aims to converse rather than just publish.

LisaHillSchoolStuff weblog
http://lisahillschoolstuff.wordpress.com/
Lisa Hill is the Director of Curriculum, and the teacher-librarian at Mossgiel Park PS, Endeavour Hills, in Melbourne. Lisa is a very avid blogger and you'll find links to her other blogs about Travel, school blogs and her ANZ LitLovers from her About page.

Moving at the Speed of Creativity
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/
Wes has a very varied blog and covers and extensive range of topics from digital storytelling, digital citizenship and educational leadership (and much much more!). I don't always fully understand Wes's post's and I find them quite long to read but he always provides a lot of other resources to follow up when he discusses a topic. Wes is also very good at providing step by step information on using tools that he has used. Wes is a teacher in the USA.

Bright Ideas
http://slav.globalteacher.org.au/
The bright Ideas blog is a multi-author blog and as such is a place to go when you want to find something new in ICT and education, rather than a blog that gets into deep discussions on topics of interest. The primary audience of the blog are school librarians and they try and encourage librarians to use some of the tools they showcase on the blog in their own schools.

Langwitches
http://langwitches.org/blog/
The main focus of this blog by Silvia Tolisano is technology in the classroom, digital storytelling, multicultural and global education. Silvia is right at the forefront of discovering new tools and gadgets to use and then sharing her experiences and examples of it's use.

OllieBray
http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/
"Creativity and Innovation in Education". Ollie is a Head Teacher currently seconded to work as National Adviser for Learning and Technology Futures at Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). Ollie reflects on conferences that he has attended and shares what he has learnt. He often shares videos that he has found on what teachers are doing in their classroom and also guides teachers in exploring topics through online technologies. I follow Ollie's blog because all the other bloggers I follow are either from Ausralia or the USA, so I like to keep up to date with what is happening in the UK.

The Power of Educational Technology
http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/
Liz Davis is just helpful. She shares what she is doing as the Director of Academic Technology at an all boys school in Boston USA and also offer helpful tips to get other teachers started with online tools.

So that's the end of my list. I have a lot of other blogs that I follow but these are the ones which I tend to gravitate towards the most. Do you have any others that aren't on my list which you like to read?
Posted by Ali Hall at 4:31 PM 10 comments
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Tuesday, 12 January 2010

LinkWithin widget

With all this widget activity in the blogfest I have stumbled across this widget called LinkWithin on a few blogs that I am following and I though I'd give it a go.

The LinkWithin widget appears under each post and links to any related blog posts in your blog archive. It appears with a heading of "you may also like these stories" and then 3 or more (you decide) thumbnail pictures from that post. The thumbnail image is another reason to include some visual stimulation in each post. As you can see my diigo resources come through automatically "imageless" so they are blank when they display. Does anyone know of a way to include an image with the post from diigo?

I am not sure what metadata the widget draws on to make the relation between posts or whether it is just random. According to a review on Read Write Web, LinkWithin pulls on not only your tabs, but the posts "relevancy, popularity and recency". I have to admit I'm not the best at tagging my posts, so maybe now is a good time to start!

So why would you use LinkWithin? I like the fact that your older blog posts can be showcased for readers of your blog, instead of just tucked away in those side archive folders. I also feel it may just encourage readers of your blog to linger a little longer and to engae in conversation through older posts, not just the new ones. The other good thing about this widget is that it is available for Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger platforms so I think you'll start to see it popping up everywhere.

What other widgets have you discovered in the new year and how do you think they will improve engagement with your blog?
Posted by Ali Hall at 3:23 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, 10 January 2010

Wonderful Widgets


The third challenge for the Blogfest is to learn about embedding widgets. A widget is a third party stand alone application that can be embedded into a web page, such as a blog or social networking home page. According to Wikipedia "Widgets are fun, engaging, and useful applications that allow users to turn personal content into dynamic web apps that can be shared on just about any website"

Here is a widget where I have put in all the places in the world that I have visited. Places I have visited:


create your own visited country map.

The red coloured areas are the countries I have visited and the grey are the areas that are still on the wish list!

There are also widgets that aim just to put a smile on the faces of your blog visitors. See the widget below as an example. This is Maukie the virtual cat. She followes your cursor around the page. Make sure you scratch her head and rub her stomach before you leave (turn your sound up).

Here are a few other examples of widgets I have come across that could be useful in an educational context:
Voki (see an example in the right column)
Flag Counter (have put this one into the side column)
Posted by Ali Hall at 4:17 PM 10 comments
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Saturday, 9 January 2010

My newly discovered resources (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Posted by Ali Hall at 4:31 PM 0 comments

Sunday, 3 January 2010

Wordy words

I recently came across this blog post on Futility Closet which details some of Joseph Strutt's invented collective nouns, supposedly taken from his The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, published in 1801.

Collective nouns are nouns which refer to a group of things, for a example a pride of lions or a school of fish. Strutt take it to the next level of oddity with:
  • a melody of harpers
  • a stalk of foresters
  • a fighting of beggars
  • a draught of butlers
  • a drunkenship of cobblers
Makes me wonder what life was like for cobblers in 1801 to be given such a bad rap?

Anyway, for a bit of fun, what collective nouns do you know of that are a little, shall we say... unusual?

Posted by Ali Hall at 8:00 PM 1 comments
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