Social Bookmarking Soulmates at WRT: Writer Response Theory
Classroom activity using Diigo's user profiles to find a "social bookmarking soulmate" who has similar interests
TeacherTube - How to create a great PowerPoint without breaking the law.
45 minute presentation from the eTech Ohio 2008 conference by Alvin Trusty. Half of the presentation is about creating good presentations, half about copyright law in education. Touches on color, contrast, font, and more.
About Fire Vox
Open Source screen reader for Firefox. Nice to have a free option that you can use for development and testing purposes without violating the TOS (i.e., JAWS).
Call Graph: The free Skype call recorder
Free tool for recording Skype calls without limits on time
Spotlight: Free Science Resources Online : March 2008 : THE Journal
Overview of free science resources from NASA, the Smithonian, and MIT OCW
First Steps Toward Becoming a 21st Century Educator | always learning
Kim Cofino's suggestions for steps to take to build skills and a Personal Learning Network (PLN).
Why Would Teachers Use Diigo? | Clif's Notes
Discussion on reasons to use Diigo in educatinal settings
Streamline It Part I: Diigo or Bust : Metanoia
Side-by-side comparison of Diigo, Del.icio.us, and Zotero from someone who was using all of them but decided to switch to just Diigo. While admitting that this is the right personal choice, he's not convinced about whether it's the right choice for schools to introduce social bookmarking.
Top 10 Worst Captchas | John M Willis ESM Blog
These are just awful Captchas--great examples of failures for usability.
Clive on Learning: PowerPoint accessibility
Discussion of accessibility challenges in PowerPoint presentations with suggested solutions for each.
eLearn: In Depth Tutorials - Designing and Developing E-learning Projects: A Three-Tiered Approach
Breaks e-learning development into three categories according to complexity: bronze, silver, and platinum. Bronze projects are simple tasks like revisions that can often be done with rapid development. Silver projects might be converting face-to-face content to online or compliance training. Platinum projects are high-impact, resource-intensive projects, including academic courses.
Diigo User Communities ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes
Stephen Downes linked to me twice in one post. W00t! This is a nice overview of the flurry of activity around Diigo over the weekend, with links to a number of posts from educators exploring the new version.
Classroom Management Quotes
Some good quotes on classroom management and education
The Bamboo Project Blog: Guide to Using Free Tools to Create an Online Portfolio
6 steps to create your online portfolio (something I really should start working on one of these days)
Site Community for christytucker.wordpress.com,
Better view of the site community around my site, showing which pages are bookmarked, how many have been bookmarked, and who saved them.
Search People By Site Diigo
Vanity search on Diigo to see everyone who has bookmarked my blog. They call this the "user community" around the site.
Diigo sandbox in elluminate in 1 1/2 hour... | Diigo Message System
Message conversation on Diigo including suggestions from Maggie Tsai on a step-by-step path to introduce/explore Diigo. This starts with the basics and gradually adds features.
21st Century Learning: 9 Principles for Implementation: The Big Shift
9 principles for implementing transformational change in education, changing the culture to support 21st century learning. Principles include "People before Things (or test scores)" and "As the Individual Grows so Will the Collective Wisdom of the Community"
20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
Some of these aren't really relevant to what I do (like the advertising info), but there's some ideas here for making my blog more useful. I really should set up some Series and Sneeze pages.
Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » Diigo you have given me a headache
Negative post about Diigo, specifically that new users are apparently asked to import contacts and can end up sending spam to everyone they know.
The Connected Classroom: DIG-ging diigo...
Long, detailed post about getting started with Diigo with all the things the author likes about Diigo over delicious. She says the networking is the biggest benefit; you know who is part of your network and can easily contact them and share. She also likes the ability to share with groups and Twitter.
Social Bookmarking Conundrum « Thumann Resources
Resources for getting started in Diigo and comparisons between Diigo and Delicious
Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Wiki collaboration leads to happiness
Great visual showing how much simpler collaborating on documents with a wiki is than emailing attachments back and forth. Based on a report of collaboration within the US intelligence community (hence the logo for the wiki side of the table).
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: The Five Phases of Flattening a Classroom
Vicki Davis explains that classrooms can't jump immediately to being fully connected--you have to take steps to build the community and teach the safe behaviors. In 5 phases, Vicki goes from the "intra-connected classroom" to a classroom with many-to-many connections and student management.
Multimodal-Learning-Through-Media.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Overview of research on how multimedia can improve learning. Includes principles from Mayer, Moreno, & Clark's research on cognitive overload. Also debunks the numbers often associate with Dale's Cone of Experience
Top News - Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning
Research on how effective use of multimedia can improve learning outcomes. Based on research by Mayer, Moreno, Clark, & others. Much of this is in e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, but some of these principles, especially on interactivity, aren't included in that book. (Quotes from page 4)
Direct Manipulation Principle: As the complexity of the materials increases, the impact of direct manipulation (animation, pacing) of the learning materials on the transfer of knowledge also increases.
However, when the average student is engaged in higher-order thinking using multimedia in interactive situations, on average, that student's percentage ranking on higher-order or transfer skills increases by 32 percentile points over what the student would have accomplished with traditional learning.
JAWS: Navigating Web Pages
Navigation keyboard commands for the JAWS screen reader
Opened Practices
Resources and descriptions for teaching practices using open source tools
eLearn: Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional
List from Stephen Downes of quick activities. Although the title says "e-learning professionals" many of these would be applicable to anyone interested in some quick ongoing professional development
Harold Jarche » Costs of open source and proprietary LCMS/LMS
Resources comparing the costs for open source and proprietary LMSs & LCMSs