twitter

Twitter ( www.twitter.com ) asks the question "What are you doing?"  You have 140 characters to respond!  That's it.  It's pretty simple really.  You can "follow" friends, meet new people, search for ideas, search for people or places, and have people "follow" your posts.

When you post, you might consider other question prompts such as: 

• "What have you stumbled upon that is really interesting to you?" 
• "What are you doing that might be of interest to others?" 
• "What can you share that might further your educational community?" 

Get the idea?  Throw out pieces of information that might be of interest to others, look for helpful tips and recommendations from others with similar interests-- that's what Twitter is all about.

Why use it?  Twitter can connect you to other people who are doing similar tasks, who might have solutions to problems, might be able to point you to interesting tools, websites or articles, and you might just make some friends!

Disadvantages?  Twitter might annoying as people often send silly tweets that are of no interest.  You will have to pick and choose who you follow and figure out if it really can be a useful tool.

TwitterBasics.pdf

delicious

www.delicious.com is a "social bookmarking" site.  What is that?  If you're not feeling particularly social you can just use it as a website to store all your bookmarks (favorites).  This means that your bookmarks are no longer confined to one computer - you can access them from any computer, at home or work, while traveling etc.  You can make these bookmarks private (only you can see them when you are logged into the site) or public (others can see them to find out what you are interested in).  It is the latter (the default) that makes your bookmarking "social" - you can share bookmarks with friends who have common interests.

Bookmarks on delicious are sorted and stored using "tags".  A tag is a list of keywords you add when you are creating the bookmark. For example, if you were to bookmark this page you might tag it "aste aste2009 education technology web2.0 internet instructionaltechnology".  Rather than storing bookmarks in folders (in which case you would have to decide - "Should this link go in my ASTE folder or in my web2.0 folder?") you can "tag" it with as many keywords as you like and then use the search features to find all your bookmarks associated with that tag.

But wait! There's more!  You can also search all of the publically available bookmarks associated with the tags you are interested in - search for "web2.0 education" and you'll find all the sites that other people have bookmarked with those tags.  It's a great way to find new information about topics you are interested in.

Why use it?  You have access to all your bookmarks no matter which computer you are working at.  You can build networks of colleagues and find new information - if others taken the trouble to bookmark a site then it probably has some useful information (or entertainment value).

Disadvantages?  A little work upfront in setting it up (you can import existing bookmarks).  To make it really seamless to use you'll need to install the add-in for your browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox).  The Firefox add-in does not require you to be "administrator" to install - the Internet Explorer add-in does.  You can use custom tags for group collaboration, but there are other sites (www.diigo.com for one) that allow group work more easily.

deliciousBasics.pdf 

Google Reader and RSS feeds

reader.google.com

Okay - now you're overwhelmed with following people on twitter, your friend's delicious bookmarks, those really great blogs you found by searching other people's bookmarks  - how do you have time to visit all those sites? Don't you wish they could all come to you?

They can!  Most of the sites will send information and updates to you through an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication).  All you need is a "Reader" to collect the feeds and put it all together for you.  Sort of like your own custom newspaper.  The RSS feeds are like a "wire service" that sends you the updates. Google Reader is one such syndicator.   These videos help explain it: RSS feeds in Plain English and Google Reader in Plain English.

Why use it?  Rather than separately clicking on a multitude of sites you can make the information and entertainment come to you - make your own custom news portal. 

Disadvantages? It can be addictive! - You add more and more sites and suddenly you have an overwhelming stream of information.  Feel free to pick and choose or "mark as read" - don't feel obliged to read every post. 

GoogleReaderBasics.pdf

mindmeister

Mindmeister ( www.mindmeister.com ) is one of many "mind-mapping" or "brainstorming" programs that lets you work, save your work, and collaborate with others all online.  There are many products similar to Mindmeister, but we chose this one because it is very easy to use and easy to learn.  You have choices while creating your mindmap and afterwards when publishing your finished map:

• It can be private seen by no one but yourself; it can be shared with those that you choose; or, it can be open to the public to view.
• You can create your mindmap without the help of others; choose to collaborate with one or more persons; or, you can open it to the public and hundreds of people can help you to build your mindmap.

Why use it?  If you are a visual person, it is a great way to brainstorm, collaborate, collect information or share ideas with others.  Having the information online means that it is accessible wherever you are from any computer location.  Very handy.

Disadvantages?  The biggest disadvantage of using this free online program is that the transfer of your mindmap information to other documents is somewhat limited.  You can print your finished mindmap, you can even publish the image as a PDF or bring it into a Word document as an image, but editing it or changing it offline is not possible.  Also, working online or accessing your mindmap offline is not permitted in the free version.  Lastly, uploading a file and attaching it to your mindmap is also restricted in the free version. 

MindMeisterBasics.pdf

 Wordle

www.wordle.net

Wordle is just plain fun!  Wordle describes itself as a "toy for generating 'word clouds' from text."  And that's just what it does.  Wordle (and other similar web applications) take text and restructures the text into images giving words that are used more frequently larger fonts and different colors.  Many blogging sites now use word clouds as part of their menus, making prominent words "clickable."  Wordle makes word clouds more like art as you can adjust:

• The color of the prominent words in your text
• The shape of your word cloud
• Which words to eliminate
• How many words to include in the cloud (top 10, top 50, top 150?)

Why use it?  It is an interesting way to visualize documents or speeches, or pages of text.  It is artistic, visual, and can be very pretty.  It is a different way of looking at data.   It is definitely addictive, though perhaps not needed.  It could be a fun way to introduce yourself to a group virtually, taking your dry bio or resume and making it a word cloud. 

  Here is a Wordle of this section of our wiki-- see how different it looks when made into a word cloud?!

Disadvantages?  You can spend a lot of time making your Wordle look just the way you like it.  Caution, as mentioned above, it can be addictive!

WordleBasics.pdf