I just came across this course which is packed full of social software resources. It’s called Five Weeks to Social Library and is running now but all the content, blog postings from participants etc are freely available. Could be stuff of interest to the CDE project but also resources for the E-Literacy and the blog/wiki staff dev courses
Has anyone come across Pipes yet? According to their overview:
Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor
What does that actually mean… well the first pipe I came across and have now cloned allows you to search all links found on a particular page so if you find a list of useful sites you can use this search tool to restrict your search to them.
My cloned copy of Tony Hirst‘s original linkedsearch pipe is set to search everything linked to from the CLT blog but you can change the URL to whatever you want. I’ve no way of knowing how well it works but it seems to pick up everything.
At the time of writing the most popular pipe is New York Times thru Flickr which finds photos (on Flickr) based on the current content of the NYT homepage.
Each pipe has an RSS feed too. If you want to browse existing pipes, clone and tweak them or create your own from scratch head over to Yahoo Pipes
Interesting post on the significance of Web 2.0 over on the Media @ LSE Group blog where David Brake expresses his doubts that tagging will ever become mainstream.
EdTech’s Scott Leslie seems to have been the first to spot Blackboard’s new social booking system. Bookmarks are viewable by all at www.scholar.com but only Blackboard customers can add bookmarks… once you’ve added the necessary PowerLink / Building Block
Anyone tried this? I haven’t yet but will be having a closer look soon. Gliffy is a browser-based tool for creating and sharing diagrams. It also allows for collaboration. In theory you can:
Create many types of diagrams such as Flowcharts, UI wireframes, Floor plans, Network diagrams, UML diagrams, or any other simple drawing or diagram
According to edtechpost it’s incredibly easy to use…
Update: have tried it now and yes very easy and def worth a look. This floorplan took two mins. You can export to various formats including PNG
Pageflakes is another personalised portal-type page. Read more on Webblogg-ed about it. The Darfur Resources Page that’s highlighted is a good example for our workshops.
Update: One thing I like about PageFlakes compared to say Netvibes (which I use as a reader) is that you can make pages public and share editing rights (via email addresses).
CLT recently ran a workshop for the LSE Library e-literacy for e-learning programme called “Social software: Blog it, Tag it, Share it”. The session started with an introduction to blogs and then how to search for and find useful blogs. We then looked at various online tools available for keeping track of multiple blogs. The second half looked at social bookmarking with del.icio.us and various academic collaborative linking and referencing sites such as citeulike.
Rather than say more about it here I’ll point you to a recording or ‘screencast’ of the session created with Camtasia. You’ll need at least Flash Player 9 for full functionality. You can also find all of the links referred to at del.icio.us as well as the traditional presentation PDF, plus handouts for the personalising Google exercise and for the Google Reader exercise.
We’re running the session again on November 24th if you fancy experiencing the live event!
Kris.
Interesting presentation on the future of VLEs from Scott Leslie. Takes a while to download (13MB) but worth persevering with for later stuff on so-called ‘e-learning 2.0’.
Also of interest, following recent conversations within CLT is Scott’s use of photos and screenshots through-out… not a PowerPoint bullet in sight!
And I also like and agree with this comparison of VLEs & TV remotes which comes from an EDUCAUSE presentation by Ali Jafari and Patricia A. McGee which i found via Scott’s blog EdTechPost while listening to his talk.
A new workshop has been added to the E-literacy for E-Learning programme:
Social Software: blog it, tag it, share it!
Friday, 10th November, 12:00 – 13:30
This session is a mixture of demonstration and hands-on activities covering blogs, RSS, news readers and social bookmarking. It looks at reading blogs as a way of keeping up-to-date in your field, focusing on how to find academic and other relevant blogs. One feature of blogs is that they produce RSS feeds, also known as news feeds. RSS feeds can be collected and read in a news reader allowing you to read the content of multiple blogs and other news sites (such as the BBC) in one place. The session will show you how to set up an online news reader for collating your personalised news, saving you from having to visit each site individually. Finally, the session looks at social bookmarking, the practice of storing your Internet Favourites or Bookmarks online, allowing you to access them from anywhere and share them with others.
The 2.0s are out in force…
Thanks to EdBloggerNews I’m now reading e-learning 2.0 – how Web technologies are shaping education.
