Edutagger

Just saw this on Twitter, a social bookmarking site just for educators. It might be a good way to introduce students to social bookmarking. Looks like the content is reviewed before being posted, as not all posters have 100% of their submissions published. It's a new service and needs support, so check it out and see if it would be useful for you.

The biggest drawback - it's K12. Why does everyone think only kids are learning to read and do math? I found an amazing site on Edutagger, ESL-Kids. Unfortunately, yet again it's designed for kids, but it's free and has a worksheet function that lets you pick a topic, generate a random word list or select your own, and then choose from 18 different worksheets. It's very low level, for example some worksheets are for tracing or copying the letters, but this could work for non-literate students and those from other alphabets. Musical instruments has a nice selection of words, and so does weather. Worth checking out for beginning low ESL.

Web 2.0 for Administrators

My workshop for administrators was interesting. It reminded me that most people don't have time to surf around and look for cool new things. That's part of OTAN's role (my favorite part!), to review the possibilities and present a few that might be helpful for busy teachers and administrators. Links are all on my wiki.

So here's what they wanted to hear about:
1. Google Calendar, and how to share a calendar online
2. Wikis - what's a wiki and what to you use it for?
3. RSS Feeds - but I had to talk about blogging first, and the OTAN News, so they would have a concept of what feeds they might want to get.
4. Social bookmarking - I didn't have time to go into detail on this, but I think this might be one of the most useful things for them

Things we didn't get to:
1. Google Docs
2. Video sharing
3. Unitedstreaming
4. Moodle
5. Open source software

This could really be a 3 hr workshop instead of just a show and tell. Maybe I should propose this for COABE.

Classroom 2.0, Social Networking, and Diigo

I'm really enjoying being a member of Classroom 2.0, a community set up by Steve Hargadon, an ed tech person, using Ning. This is a community of teachers interested in using technology, and they are from all over the world. When I first signed up, my first friend request came from a teacher in Germany. There are lots of interesting topics being discussed there. I drop in when I have a chance, and read a few posts.

For example, tonight I went to the homepage and looked at the new discussions. Steve started several to get people to talk about what kinds of sites they use and like for various things. I checked in to the social bookmarking discussion, and read a really interesting post by Dave Ehrhart. I thought everyone would be talking about Delicious, but no. Dave is using a site called Diigo with his students. Not only can they bookmark sites, but they can highlight pages that they read and write notes on them. Dave, their high school history teacher, can look at their highlighting and notes and add comments of his own to help direct their inquiry or sharpen their insights.

Dave posted a screencast that explains exactly how he uses this tool with his students. After I watched it I understood Diigo and started thinking about how it could be used with adult education students. So I clicked on Dave's icon and went to his home page, left a comment there, and sent a request to add him as a friend. I want to see what else he has discovered!

That's social networking. Steve Hargadon has also created another community on Ning to help teachers set up and use communities. Today I proposed a workshop for CATESOL on Social Networking for Professional Development. I swore I wasn't going to do more than one workshop next year, but this topic I couldn't resist. I have the privilege of having time to surf around and see what's new, and I see part of my job as sharing what I learn, so there you go. Leave me a comment if you like or use Diigo, of if you have other social bookmarking sites to share.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Just came across this video by Lee Lefever explaining social bookmarking in simple terms. It could be a great aid to explaining Delicious and other sites (he mentions Magnolia and furl) to teachers, students and even your relatives who haven't experienced this approach yet.

I'm interested because we are currently working on converting the OTAN My Resources area from the old files and folders model to the new tags and tag clouds model, and should have this up soon. We have about 1,000 people who have saved links in their Resources area, and I anticipate that all will not be thrilled with the change, as all never are. Maybe we can send out a link to this video to help explain what social bookmarking is. What do you think?



He has posted some other videos too, like RSS in Plain English and Social Networking in Plain English. Check him out on YouTube or at the Common Craft Show.