UncategorizedArchive for category

Changes are a Comin

You may have noticed a lull in the posts for this blog recently, work has kept me very busy and I have been doing a great amount of research as well. I plan on restructuring the format in which I deliver my blog posts to make a few things better for you.

  • I plan on having someone edit my posts, although this may not happen all the time.
  • I plan on adding things to a wiki style spreadsheet with predetermined criteria for evaluating a web tools usefulness to education. This chart will be viewable in most posts and also allow you to add tools to it and evaluate it on the pre-existing criteria in the spreadsheet. I don’t want my blog to be a microcosm of information that I push out to whoever, I really see this as being our resource for web tools to facilitate educators who want to leverage these great free tools to make courses more accessible to students.
  • Each post will be crafted with a bit more care and have a predesigned format that should make it easier to determine if it is useful to you at a glance.
  • I will also be working on the look of it to make the text that is there more readable. I plan on letting a bit more about who I am seep into my posts. The point of this is so that you can see where I am coming from, my skills, background and passions. I am also hoping that this makes you feel more comfortable posting comments.
  • I also want to find out what you want, I have always said that what I do is problem solve and this blog is intended to be a resource of problems solved with Web 2.0 tools that instructors can use as inspiration. If you have a classrom problem and think that there may be a Web 2.0 solution for it then let me know about it and I will try and solve it.

So keep a lookout for new posts that will look better, read better, and include more of you in them.

Twitter It!

No Comments

RSS: How to get Started

So I have talked about a variety of different services that hopefully cater to different types of people and how you like to learn and discover. In this final article I would like to take it one step further and walk you through how to set up an RSS feed. I mentioned it in my first article how important that I feel RSS feeds are for everyone to save time, continue learning and stay current but I just need to make it known how misunderstood I think they are. They are not suppose to help you read 1000 articles a day, they are meant to help you quickly filter out even 1 article out of a thousand that you find interesting. I go through 300-500 articles a day and only read about 10-20 each of which I find very valuable for myself and others.

So without further ado here is a great tutorial on how to set up with a Google account and using Google Reader in less than 5 min.

Remember to check out parts one and two in this series for important information about RSS feeds.

Twitter It!

No Comments

A New Look

I thought it was about time for a bit of an updated look to the blog so don’t be scared all is still right with the world. On a side note I am back from holidays and will be posting regularily agian in the upcoming week so stay tuned.

Twitter It!

No Comments

Wordle, a word cloud generator

There isn’t much to Wordle it just does what it does very well and that is create word clouds from text that you input. If you have never experienced a word cloud then you are missing out, the more often a word shows up in a chunk of text the larger it appears in the cloud (see the example below). There is no signup required although it helps with a few things. You have a fair amount of control over the word cloud by being able to change the font, layout, colour and all the usual visual treatments.

So how can this benefit education?

  • Create a visual of by pasting the text from a chapter of a book/text/article and easily represent the words that show up most in the book.
  • Get your students to create word clouds (a word of caution on this use as the gallery is not moderated so it is possible for students to browse and find unsuitable word clouds and images so a word to the wise).
  • Put word clouds into your course as often as you can to spice it up and show the content of the the course section at a glance.

That’s all I got so help me out and give me some ideas of great ways to use this free service.

Wordle: Wordle in Education2

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Twitter It!

No Comments