Thing #9

Week 4 - RSS & Newsreaders - Useful Blogs & News Feeds

Here are a few links I found to some Useful Blogs and News Feed sites. the best one available is naturally the Hunter Institute Library Online News Blog: http://hunterlibraryonline.wordpress.com/

Also the Hamilton TAFE Library Blog: http://dianne.edublogs.org/ is another wonderful example of a blog/

Other links to various blog and newsfeed sites are:

• Australian RSS Feed search tool: http://www.ansearch.com.au/
• Environmentally friendly search engine: http://www.ecocho.com.au/
• Aussie Blog Search engine: http://gnoos.com.au/
• Interesting Blog: http://heyjude.wordpress.com/student-tools-let-them-fly/

Here are few more to investigate:

• http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/site/feeds/index.html
• http://www.topix.net/au/sydney
• http://www.technorati.com/
• http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/LibraryGuides/rss.shtml
• http://www.cnet.com.au/software/internet/0,239029524,240059567,00.htm
• http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php

One interesting fact I found out is that the popular Feedster site is no longer available. Check out this site for more information: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blog_search_feedster_quietly_dies.php

Thing #8

Week 4 - RSS & Newsreaders - RSS feeds and Bloglines

I have been using RSS feeds for a long time now, so I'm very familiar with the way they work. What I have never done is add a link to the feeds to an external site. That was interesting. It took me a bit of fiddling to get everything to look the way I wanted, but I'm happy with the result.

I then decided to create a blogroll using the site Blogger recommends Blogrolling - http://www.blogrolling.com/. I have to say it was very difficult to do. Not because of the technicalities of adding the blogroll, which was very easy, but because of the speed of the TAFE network. It really is atrocious sometimes and makes the prospect of doing anything online fill you with dread.

Anyway enough griping. Using Blogrolling to maintain my blogroll means I can add links to any website I visit by simply clicking on a button on my IE toolbar. I added links to the blogs of all of 23 things participants I have access to in about 10 minutes (It was actually over an hour - see previous rant about the speed of the TAFE network - but it should have taken only 10 minutes). This means I can add links on the fly as I'm surfing the web - very convenient.

Thing #7

Week 3 - Technology Related Blog Post

I have just recently been introduced to the world of Second Life, which is a social networking environment where residents can 'live', own land, conduct business, or just hang out with friends in a 3-D virtual environment. More information can be found on their website at http://secondlife.com.

After having a look around this virtual 3D world, I decided that I'm not that interested in maintaining a second life as I can barely fit everything in I need to do in my first life. What interested me was the potential for running turorial sessions in world.

Each resident gets to create an Avatar through which they can then interact with other residents and the environment. There already exist many training centres and libraries in world that can be either accessed by everyone or are restricted to invitees only. The interaction between the residents can either be conducted through normal chat text, or if headphones with microphones are used real time conversations can occur.

The main downside to using Second Life is that it isn't freely available in the TAFE network. Like a number of other applications and services, if a strong enough case was put forward it may be possible to gain access. Even so, if an online course was being conducted this limitation may not be an issue for the student as long as the teacher coudl gain access internally.

A number of TAFE projects have been set up to investigate the use of Second Life for educational purposes. I think it has great potential. What better way to make the online student feel a little less isolated than being able to have almost real face-to-face conversations with their teacher and classmates?

Thing #6

Week 3 - Flickr Mashups

My Trading Card

I created this trading card using FD Toys' Trading Card Maker - http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php.

There are so many fun things to play with, and so little time.

Thing #5b

Photo taken by me and uploaded to Flickr

Wyong Library, originally uploaded by Bandieboy.

Thing #5a

Photo found on Flickr


mystical tree, originally uploaded by Jeri Peier.

I'm using Flickr's blogging tool to post this image on my blog - I hope it works.

Thing #5

Week 3 - Photos & Images - Explore Flickr

Flickr is a great tool for sharing photos and videos (if you pay for a Pro account). As a social network it is great for keeping in touch with distant friends and relatives.

As an educational tool it would be a great way to teach students digital image sharing and manipulation (using Picnik) as well as many other practical uses, and best of all it's fun to use and FREE. Wonderful stuff.

I'm now going to try to post an image directly from Flicka ....

Thing #4

Week 2 - Blogging - Register your Blog

Oops - just going over my blog posts and I realised that I didn't register my blog when I was suppose to. My bad :(

Thing #3

Week 2 - Blogging - Create Blog and Avatar

One of the hardest thing I found when creating the blog was coming up with a suitable name - one that was clever and descriptive at the same time. All of my ideas were already taken, which isn't surprising given the number of blogs out there.

I really do enjoy playing around with blog templates and seeing what features I can enable etc., and creating my avatar was also fun - though uploading it to my blog didn't work the way it was suppose to, it took some fiddling to get it to display. I still have some work to do on the blog design - my avatar is suppose to be animated, and it needs to be bigger, and ..... so much more playing to do.

Thing #2

Week 1 - Lifelong Learning Habits
This task introduced the 7½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners.

As an introduction to the process of interacting with an online tutorial it was a good exercise, though I found the content a bit simplistic. Even so, for a student that was nervous or hesitant about undertaking the tutorials it was well presented and encouraging.

This reinforced for me the need to ensure that the abilities of the students are considered when designing a training program to make sure that all levels are catered for - keeping it basic enough for the newcomer, while maintaining the interest of the more advanced students.