Archive for the ‘Web 2.0 Applications’ Category

… by Anna Miller, who writes on the topic of online degrees. She welcomes your comments at her email id: anna.miller009@gmail.com

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It’s not just a phone today; for some people, it’s a way of life. The iPhone from Apple has not just revolutionized the way we communicate but also the way we access and use information and knowledge. For the graduate student who has crossed one stage of college life and is now in a more serious phase, the iPhone is more of a management and study tool than a source of fun and entertainment. That’s not to say that a grad student’s nose must be glued to the grindstone all the time, just that the apps they tend to prefer on their phone are more the utility kind than the frivolous ones. With that in mind, let’s look at a list of iPhone apps that are suitable for any grad student who’s a natural with this smartphone:

1. iGraduation: Every college student dreams of the day they graduate, whether they’re doing a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Use this app to keep track of your date of graduation and set up a countdown timer with the number of hours and minutes left till you’re officially a postgraduate. The ticking clock also serves to remind you that your time at college is limited and that you need to get started on whatever you need to do before you graduate, be it prepare for your exams or propose to your girlfriend or complete that bet with your friend.
2. Now Hiring: If you’re still a student, you’re definitely going to be looking for a job to work on when you graduate, and with the Now Hiring app, you can search for jobs based on various filters like location and payment among others, and email listings to your mail address so you can apply for them later. This app aggregates all the latest job postings from the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Spain, France and India.
3. iProcrastinate: If you are in the habit of procrastination, then iProcrastinate is just the app for you – it helps you manage your schedules effectively and efficiently and keeps you from forgetting important events and deadlines.
4. iClickr PowerPoint Remote: PowerPoint presentations form a part of every college student’s routine; so the next time you make one, convert your iPhone into a cool remote control with this app. Just use the buttons on the interface not just to play and pause your presentation but also to add annotations on the go and set an alarm so you finish before your time runs out.
5. iBookStore: One of the best and smartest ways to buy books from right where you are using your iPhone is through the iBookStore app; all you need to do is take a picture of the book’s barcode with your iPhone or enter the ISBN number, title and author to find where it’s cheapest, and the make your payment. Better yet, send the link to your parents or well-meaning aunts and uncles so that they can buy the book for you.
6. Wi-Fi Finder: Free Wi-Fi hotspot connections are always popular with the college crowd, and when your iPhone can find the best and strongest signals using this app, why would you not want to download, especially because it’s free as well?

Image: RickyRomeo

Just a few thought on how to get asynchronous communication to work online.

So, what do you do?

I was thinking about this this morning as I did my usual catch-up on Google Reader. Here’s the post that got me thinking:
Imagining a mobile Moodle from iAlja by Alja Sulčič.

There are so many blog posts and so little time. So if you want to get your post read what can you do to increase your chances? Here are the things that appeal to me – i.e. get me to read the whole post not just skim and move on.

Subjects or titles

1. Questions are good, especially if it is a question I an interested in finding the answer to.
2. Numbers, like “21  ways to be more interactive in your online teaching”.
3. Make sure you actually say what the post is about, unless you can write such interesting subject lines that get people curious enough to read on. Alja wrote about Moodle and as I use that a lot it got my attention.

Content

1. Well obviously content has to be relevant to your readers.
2. Don’t write a thesis, if you have THAT much to say write a number of posts, or write an article and post on your website. Alja points readers to scribed to read her conference paper.
3. Include a picture to cue me  to what you are writing about so I can make a quick decision about whether to read further or not.
4. Embed video. Alja put a video up on YouTube of her talk at the conference. Note YouTube only allows videos of 10 mins in length so you will have to split it or upload to somewhere else like TeacherTube or Vimeo.
5. Link to other resources.
6. Don’t just give the opening in your RSS give the whole post. Some will disagree but I only click through to read more if the opening really captures me. So if you only give the first bite, make this hook people.
7. Finishing with a question is a good way to get comments from your readers.

So what would you include in your top ten tips?

Image: Wallyg

Here is a copy of my presentation I did recently at the Plymouth eLearning Conference 2010.

I’m a great fan of Jane Hart‘s Learning Tools Directory which she started in 2006.

For 2010 she has completely revised the structure, reflecting how things have changed over the last 4 years. Go have a look, but in brief here are the 12 new categories (taken from Jane’s blog post)

1. Instructional Tools
   Tools for creating, delivering,  managing learning and/or providing a social learning environment.  Includes course authoring, testing, LMS, CMS and SLEs Currently listing 290 tools
2. Live Tools
   Tools for delivering live meetings, screen sharing and accessing/building virtual worlds.  Includes web, audio, video conferencing, live broadcasting, 3D/virtual worlds
   Currently listing 85 tools
   
3. Document & Presentation Tools
   Tools to create, host and/or share documents, PDFs, e-Books and/or presentations. Includes word processing, presentation tools, PDF convertors, document and presentation hosting sites
   Currently listing 177 tools
4. Blogging, Web & Wiki Tools
   Tools to create blogs, web pages/sites and wikis as well as provide interactivity on those sites. Includes blogging tools, web site tools, wikis, widgets, RSS feeds tools, forms,  web poll and survey sites
   Currently listing 255 tools
5. Image, Audio & Video Tools
   Tools to create, edit and/or host images, avatars, audio files, podcasts, screencasts and videos.  Includes image editors, images hosting sites, audio editors, video makers, screencasting tools, video hosting sites
   Currently listing 270 tools
6. Communication Tools
   Tools for a range of synchronous and asynchronous communication activities.Includes email, voice/video messaging, instant messaging, chat rooms, discussion forums
   Currently listing 151 tools
7. Micro-blogging Tools
   These tools are for real-time updating (140 characters at a time) both publically or privately, as well as a range of useful Twitter apps. Includes micro-blogging, back channel tools, Twitter apps
   Currently listing 141 tools
8. More collaboration tools
   These are (further) stand-alone tools suitable for individuals to work and learn more effectively with others – as well as on their own. Includes social bookmarking, calendar sharing, mind mapping, notetaking/sharing, whiteboards, research and other tools
   Currently listing 188 tools
9. Social Networking and Collaboration Spaces
   These social media platforms include public social networks as well as tools to create private collaborative, social spaces for groups or communities, as well as enterprise collaboration systems (with multiple group sites).  Includes public social networks, networking and community platforms, group spaces, Enterprise 2.0 systems
   Currently listing 107 tools
10. Personal Productivity Tools
    These tools are for an individual’s personal working, learning and/or productivity purposes. Includes mind mapping, information and time management tools, web search, and other productivity tools
    Currently listing 149 tools
11. Browsers, Players & Readers
    These tools are useful for browsing the web and accessing web content. Includes browsers, extensions, plugins, bookmarklets, toolbars, readers and players, online start pages
    Currently listing 68 tools
12. Mobile Tools
    These mobile tools are for working, learning and/or productivity purposes.Includes tools for iPhone/iTouch, Blackberry and Android devices
    Currently listing 47 tools
    

Oh and if you want to recommend a tool to be added to the Directory go here.

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The 2009 list is out from Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.

As always this makes a great read.

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These are the slides from a workshop I did at Auckland University recently.

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I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of spam in my blog comments. In fact only 0.15% are legitimate. Yes the decimal point is in the right place.

Most of the spam is just the usual plethora of smut. But a small group of perpetrators are getting through the traps I have set for them. These are the folks who make comments about my posts, usually complimentary (thanks), but they spoil it by putting a link to something completely unrelated to my blog. I had one only this morning that included a link to a particular Grill. So I edited the comment and deleted the link. I don’t often edit comments, but it’s my blog after all so if the content of the comment is not in keeping with my blog I feel justified in doing an edit.

What these commentators don’t realise is

• I have Askimet in place, which catches most of the spam automatically. It’s very rarely wrong (only 3 false positives in all the time I’ve been using it). Askimet is a plugin for WordPress and very easy to install. If you haven’t got it go get it.
• I use Disqus which allows me to moderate comments, and also to white/black list people. It picks up any links in comments which I then moderate. So if you comment on my blog don’t bother to put in links that are of no interest to my readers (mainly teachers and edu-techies). Disqus is great as it allows me to have threaded replies to comments. It imported my existing comments with no problems. Chris Brogan first put me on to it and I am very happy with it.

So all you spammers out there, stop spamming my comments, you ain’t going to get through.

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This page is part of the “How to teach with …” series, and may get updated from time to time. I’ll tweet when it has been updated.

As a teacher

• what do you need to know about Twitter,
• how do you use it,
• why is its useful for learning and teaching,
• When and where do you tweet?

What you need to know about Twitter?

1. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates (known as tweets) (wikipedia)
2. Twitter was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, so it’s a relatively new Web 2.0 application.
3. This is a great intro from the Common Craft people:
   
4. A tweet is like an SMS text message, but only 140 characters long, and Twitter is therefore sometimes described as SMS for the Internet (D’Monte)
5. Twitter has been ranked as the third most used  (Kazeniac) and as the fastest growing social network (Nielsen.com). So it looks like being around for a while yet, which makes it worth the investment of time needed to get to know any application.

How do you use it?

1. Create an account at twitter.com. Note that a form of a person’s real name is becoming increasingly used for their username, though many, like me, still use a nickname. Don’t make it too long as it forms part of the 140 character length.
2. Update your profile via [Settings]
   
   • Account Tab:
     • Add your real name and location so people can find you.
     • Add a brief bio – limited to 160 characters – shows on your profile page.
     • Only protect your tweets if you want to keep your tweets private i.e. approve who can follow you (this also keeps your tweets out of search results). I don’t personally see the point of this if you are using Twitter to share with your educational colleagues.
   • Password Tab: self explanatory, but you need this password not only to login and tweet, but also to use Twitter clients and APIs.
   • Devices Tab: If you want to you can tweet via your mobile, and have direct tweets (tweets sent to your privately) texted to your phone.
   • Notices Tab: Get told when you receive a new follower, have a direct tweet, or sign up for the newsletter. Probably worth turning these on at least to begin with.
   • Picture Tab: Add an image of yourself – people are more likely to follow you if you have an image.
   • Design Tab: Show your interest in Twitter and change from the standard design. There are lots of Twitter background creation apps around, but to start with use one of those available on Twitter.
3. Find people to follow
   
   
   You can search for any phrase, not just names. Click on [Follow] when you find someone you want to follow i.e. get their tweets. This is the point of Twitter, listen to other people’s tweets and share your tweets with other people.
   • There is a great list of edu-tweeters compiled by Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT). Why not add yourself?
   • You can search Twazzup.com in a similar way to [Find People] on Twitter. In addition to real-time tweets on your topic it also shows related keywords, suggested people to follow, news, most popular links, and influential/active/latest tweeters.
   • Common Craft explain Twitter Search:
     
4. Trending Topics (what’s hot) show on your Twitter home page (you need to be logged in). Note the hash tag in some of these.
   
5. Tweet: Once you have followed a few people and seen what they tweet about, it’s time to tweet yourself. The simplest way is to go to twitter, login and tweet in the [What are you doing?] box. As you will have seen you don’t have to literally tweet what you are doing. The question “What’s getting your attention?” is probably more useful.
6. Get a Twitter application or two. Having to go to Twitter each time can be a pain. So you will probably want to get your self a Twitter client. These help you to organise, read and tweet. Try out a few to see which you like best. These are my personal favourites.
   • Tweetdeck – connects you to Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and more.
   • Seesmic – recently added the ability to connect to Facebook as well as multiple twitter accounts.
   • Echofon – used to be called TwitterFox, great way to connect with Twitter if you use the Firefox browser.

Why is its useful for learning and teaching?

I blogged about 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Education back in Aug 2008. So I won’t repeat myself entirely. But here are a few ideas about why I feel it’s useful for learning and teaching:

1. Keep yourself up-to-date with what other edu-tweeters are reading/thinking/doing. You can’t possibly read everything these days, so let others do some of the leg work, and reciprocate by tweeting about what you’ve read/seen. Feel free to ask questions too.
2. Keep parents in the know about what’s happening in your class/school. Have a school Twitter account with many people who tweet (helpful when someone is on leave)
3. Keep prospective students in the know about what’s happening in your institution/college/university
4. Keep your students in the know about things you’ve seen on the web that are useful for their course
5. Put a feed from your tweet/search into your LMS class site. Use # tags so you can tweet for numerous classes.
6. Promote your students’ stories (but be careful to maintain anonymity)

When and where do you tweet?

1. Many people tweet all the time, from work, from home, from their mobile whilst on the go (pls don’t do this whilst driving!). So where you do it is entirely up to you and the capabilities you have for doing it.
2. When you have something to say. Do the “I’m going shopping” tweet if you like, but if you want to be an edu-tweeter my advice is to mainly, well, edu-tweet.
3. It’s becoming more and more used at conferences as a “back channel” so people tweet about their impressions, thought about speakers, people they’ve met. Conferences often have a hash tag #hashtag which is included in the tweet so other people can follow all the tweets from the conference by searching for the hastag.

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This is a great video. If you needs some stats start here. Here’s some highlights of the things that struck a chord with me:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber us baby boomers.
• Social media has over taken porn on the web
• Facebook added 100 million users in under 9 months
• At least on US college has stopped issuing email to freshmen – they don’t want one
• TV ads are out – watching Tv online is upcoming
• 35% of book sales on Amazon are on Kindle
• Social Media is a fundamental shift in how we communicate

Thanks to iLibrarian for this link.