09
Mar

Go Diigo.

Piggybacking off of my latest entry on social bookmarking, I have decided to add another bookmarking site into my repertoire. Diigo is such a powerful research and knowledge sharing too, especially for my students as a technology teacher. Perhaps the most powerful knowledge-sharing tool, apart fromTwitter. Do not get me wrong, I still love some of the other bookmarking tools out there, such as delicious, but Diigo’s network and groups are extremely intuitive and offer a myriad of features that other bookmarking sites do not.

A feature I love about Diigo is the ability to annotate a website by using Diigo’s highlighter to highlight what is important and what you want to save. You can see how this would work great in an educational setting. If you are a fellow educator, you also have the ability to collaborate in private forums with your students on a website or an annotation.

I know some of you are skeptical, like myself was at first, because you have other accounts, like myself with delicious. No worries here because Diigo has made a tool where you can easily import your bookmarks from other services such as delicious or Google Notebook in an instance and then be notified byDiigo once the import is complete. Diigo also allows user to sync bookmarks between Diigo and these other services in case you do not want to let go of that precious delicious account.

Give Diigo a spin, you will not be disappointed.

To check out my library and then follow me, point your browser here: Andor Kish diigo’s site.

If you are interested in Diigo’s abilities and want to see them in action check out this video page explaining research, share, and collaborate: http://www.diigo.com/learn_more

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25
Feb

Zootools. Lasso your zoo for inspiration.

There are many social bookmarking sites out there like Delicious, Diigo, Evernote, and Socialmarker, but only one is truly designed to save websites, images, and videos that are inspirational. Zootool does an amazing job of saving images, websites, and videos in a simple and stylistic fashion. A user uses the “lasso” tool, which is installed to a user’s bookmarks toolbar, to capture their inspiration.

The “lasso” tool is a creative web widget that allows the user to save their inspiration, add tags, and then disseminate their favorite inspirational pieces through their linked social media sites. Additional add-ons for Zootool are the Aquarium, which is a quicksearch for your Zoo, and the Aviary, which is a quick and simple way to share your images, videos, and documents on Twitter and Zootool at once.

Definitely check out Zootool. To check out my Zootool page check out: http://zootool.com/user/andorkish

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18
Feb

‘Social Media is going away’

Jeff Pulver, of pulver.com, makes some interesting points on fora.tv regarding social media, namely explaining how social media is really a change in communication. In many ways I agree with Pulver on how we are at the beginning of communication change and this evolution in communication has yet to be capitalized on and we are not entirely sure which direction it is headed. Thoughts? Link to the video below.

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11
Feb

Google Buzzzzzz…

Google announced earlier this week a new social networking app called Google Buzz. After having it “installed” in my Gmail account I decided to give it a spin. After logging into Gmail I was perplexed to how to use Google Buzz. Google was telling me it was in Gmail account, but nothing was showing up. Was this a glitch or did it need sometime to just “activate” itself in my account.

After finally waiting for a couple of hours, the Buzz button showed up. I immediately clicked on it thinking I was going to see revolutionary, instead I was totally let down by Google’s new service. It did not bring anything revolutionary that Google thinks it is bringing, well at least not just yet, but it would not also overtake the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

I am not really sure if I will get excited in the future for new Google products because of the let downs I have had with Google Wave, Google Nexus One (even though I have the iPhone I thought the Nexus One would give Apple a kick in it’s pants), and now with Google Buzz. All of the previously mentioned Google services/devices have potential, but right now, other than Gmail and Google Search, Google seems to be releasing nothing new that is Buzz worthy.

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08
Nov

Online Collaboration

NJ.com posted an article this morning, entitled “Students Discovering Online Collaboration” where the author explains part of the revolution that is happening in quite a few schools in New Jersey. The district I teach in has just launched Moodle last week, and I am one of small “test” groups who is using it in the classroom.

Moodle is unquestionably one of the premiere online collaboration tools that many districts and K-12 employ. Moodle is very similar to BlackBoard or Scholar, which colleges utilize for communication and collaboration. Not only are students enthused about learning, but students’ accountability is increased because of online collaboration. This enthusiasm and accountability is also supplemented through other Web 2.0 technologies.

As educators, we must utilize the tools that students learning through, mainly technology, the Internet, and mobile learning. NJ.com’s article does a great job of introducing how new age students are learning, but now it is our [teacher's] turn to best use the technology in and out of classrooms.

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