Social Networking: Yahoo! for Teachers

Yahoo! recently released a new social network for teachers allowing them to share learning materials.

Once you have an account, you will be able to explore projects added by other educators by state, grade level, and subject.

You can also connect with other teachers at other schools in your city, county, state – or anywhere!

What looks most interesting is the Gobbler, a tool that allows teachers to build a project by saving images, clippings, links, and other information from websites to your projects in Yahoo! Teachers. You can also create handouts or worksheets using the document creator and add it to your project. All your projects can be saved in a portfolio and shared with other teachers, and they can share their projects with you.

To get an account and check out this new network, go to the Yahoo! Teachers home http://teachers.yahoo.com/ to sign up for an invitation. You will be sent a password for the Beta site. The Beta site will then allow teachers to register for an account.

Tech Tips: I *heart* Del.icio.us

I love del.icio.us! It’s my favorite social bookmarking application (although I will confess I haven’t tried too many others since I like this one so much). You can find my del.icio.us account here and see how much I love it by all the tags and bookmarks. 🙂

Getting Started
It’s quite easy to set up an account and start bookmarking. Since del.icio.us is web-based, you can bookmark pages and see your bookmarks from any computer. You can also assign multiple tags to each bookmark and then organize your tags making it easy to find all the great recipe sites you’ve bookmarked – or whatever your interest is. You can also build a network of friends on del.icio.us to see what your friends are bookmarking. Since privacy can be an issue, del.icio.us offers a “do not share” checkbox beside each bookmark, so you can choose if there are ones you do not want to share.

Must Have Add-Ons
If you use Firefox, there are browser add-ons that make bookmarking much easier.

1) The del.icio.us buttons add-on simply adds a del.icio.us button and a TAG button in your browser navigation bar. You can bookmark any page as you find it by clicking the TAG button.

2) The Delicious Bookmarks add-on is an updated version of del.icio.us buttons, which also provides a sidebar that lets you browse and search your bookmarks easily.

Delicious Bookmarks :: Firefox Add-ons via kwout

You only need one of these – not both. My only issue with add-ons is that I have yet to find an add-on that lets you manage multiple del.icio.us account easily. I actually have a few accounts, and I want an add-on that lets me choose the account(s) when I add a bookmark. I know it would be hard to create, but I bet there’s a developer out there looking for a challenge. 😉

Blogging Settings
The blogging settings also offer some nice goodies. If you have a blog, you can include daily blog posts of the pages you have bookmarked in del.icio.us. Also, you can add a link roll to your blog (as I just did):

Learning about Libraries and Technology via kwout

Del.icio.us for Georgia Libraries
I have a second account here that I set up as an example of how librarians may use a del.icio.us account at their library, particularly for a reference desk in Georgia. I have been experimenting with a ranking system for the subject category tags with the idea that a librarian could give a 1- to 5-start rating to a site based on how good it is for a particular subject. Like I said, it’s an experiment, and I may change it. Let me know what you think.

Vendor News: Browse a Book in MySpace?

Oxford University Press is looking toward social networking sites as places to sell books. See the full story at:

http://blog.oup.com/2007/04/widget/

This sounds like a great idea to me, but I wonder if they can provide “suggestions” based on the interests or hobbies listed in my profile. Hmmm, that would be nice…

Courtney

Technology Resource: Why Netcasting to Teach?

I like this quick and easy overview of podcasting – well, netcasting (?). There are several good ideas for how to use them to teach, and I like the brief explanation of how to “do it yourself.” Nice, simple explanation!

http://www.k12handhelds.com/podcasting.php

So, why did I say netcasting?

Ever since Apple started claiming trademark infringement for using the term “podcast,” I have heard some interesting discussion about it. Leo Laporte has started using the term “netcast” to refer to all of the shows on the TWiT Netcast Network. Robert Scoble suggests using the terms “audiocast” and “videocast” instead.

I personally have been trying to say “netcast” as a general term, but I like using the other terms to differentiate between the two – because it matters to those of us who only have time to listen or to those of us who like the visual. I listen to audiocasts while I’ve driving to work, but I can watch videocasts on my home television, so I like to know the difference before I download it.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you call them, they can be a wonderful tool for teaching and library instruction!

So, are any of you using netcasting to teach your users? If so, please tell me all about it!

Courtney