100 Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators (pdf document) free file download at fliiby.com

"Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators A Guide to RSS and More Version 2.0 By Quentin D’Souza This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs 2.0 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ca/ "Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable." -John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS SHOULD YOU READ THIS? .............................................................................................................. 6 WHAT IS RSS AND ATOM FEED? ................................................................................................. 6 WEB 2.0 – I DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS A 1.0? ................................................................. 7 WHAT IS A FOLKSONOMY AND TAGGING? ........................................................................... 8 ISSUES AROUND TAGGING....................................................................................................................... 9 WHAT IS CREATIVE COMMONS? ................................................................................................. 9 THINK ABOUT STUDENT PRIVACY........................................................................................... 10 WHAT DOES A FEED DO? ............................................................................................................... 11 WHAT DOES A FEED LOOK LIKE?.............................................................................................. 12 HOW CAN YOU USE FEEDS? ......................................................................................................... 13 USING AN ONLINE AGGREGATOR - BLOGLINES.............................................................. 16 SETTING UP A FEED IN BLOGLINES....................................................................................................... 16 VIEWING YOUR FEED IN BLOGLINES .................................................................................................... 19 WHERE DO YOU FIND FEEDS?.................................................................................................... 19 IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED...................................................................................................... 21 SOCIAL BOOKMARKING AND RSS ........................................................................................................ 21 WHAT IS SOCIAL BOOKMARKING?........................................................................................................ 21 HOW IT WORKS? ................................................................................................................................... 22 BLOGGING AND RSS.............................................................................................................................. 25 WHAT IS A BLOG? .................................................................................................................................. 25 COMMENTS IN BLOGS ............................................................................................................................ 27 WIKIS AND RSS..................................................................................................................................... 27 WHAT IS A WIKI?................................................................................................................................... 27 SHARING RSS FEEDS ............................................................................................................................ 29 PHOTO SHARING AND RSS ................................................................................................................... 29 WHAT IS PHOTO SHARING? .................................................................................................................. 29 HOW IT WORKS...................................................................................................................................... 30 MORE IDEAS ......................................................................................................................................... 31 SHARING LEARNING OBJECT’S .............................................................................................................. 31 K-12 Learning Objects Shared Through RSS..................................................................... 31 CLASS AND SCHOOL INFORMATION ...................................................................................................... 32 TRACK DISCUSSIONS ............................................................................................................................. 33 CREATING A PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ..................................................... 33 KEEPING TRACK OF PEOPLE................................................................................................................... 33 AUDIO AND RSS .................................................................................................................................... 33 WHAT IS PODCASTING?......................................................................................................................... 33 HOW IT WORKS?.................................................................................................................................... 34 VIDEO AND RSS..................................................................................................................................... 35 WHAT IS VIDEO SHARING? ................................................................................................................... 35 HOW IT WORKS?.................................................................................................................................... 35 PERSONAL EPORTFOLIO ......................................................................................................................... 36 Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 3 PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS ................................................................................................................... 36 MERGING FEEDS TOGETHER.................................................................................................................. 36 TO DO LISTS .......................................................................................................................................... 37 COLLABORATING ON DOCUMENTS AND SPREADSHEETS .................................................................... 38 GET YOUR RSS BY EMAIL ..................................................................................................................... 39 OR GET YOUR EMAIL BY RSS............................................................................................................... 39 REMINDERS BY RSS .............................................................................................................................. 40 NOTE TAKING.......................................................................................................................................... 41 ONLINE PRESENTATION SOFTWARE ...................................................................................................... 41 ONLINE DIAGRAMS................................................................................................................................. 42 CALENDARS ............................................................................................................................................. 42 RESEARCH TOOLS .............................................................................................................................. 43 SEARCHING NEWSGROUPS .................................................................................................................... 43 TRACKING PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS ............................................................................................ 43 CREATING A SEARCH FEED.................................................................................................................... 44 NEWSPAPERS .......................................................................................................................................... 44 EXTREME RSS – A FEW MORE RSS IDEAS...................................................................................... 46 RSS ON YOUR START PAGE .................................................................................................................. 46 RSS TO PDF CONVERSION ................................................................................................................... 46 WEATHER BY RSS.................................................................................................................................. 46 WORD OF THE DAY................................................................................................................................. 46 RSS CONTACTS...................................................................................................................................... 46 CLASSIFIED ADS AND AUCTIONS.......................................................................................................... 47 RSS ON YOUR DESKTOP ....................................................................................................................... 47 CREATE YOUR OWN RSS FEED AUTOMATICALLY................................................................................ 47 MORE IDEAS TO COME … .............................................................................................................. 47 GLOSSARY: ............................................................................................................................................ 48 REFERENCES:........................................................................................................................................ 50 Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 4 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Quentin D’Souza is an Elementary Resource Teacher in the Academic Information and Communication Technology Department at the Toronto Catholic District School Board, which is responsible for over 80,000 students in Toronto, Canada. He helps teachers and administrators to improve the quality of education that they can deliver to their students through the use of technology. Quentin has written numerous articles that have appeared in print and online. He has presented focused technology seminars, workshops, and multi-day events both locally and provincially. Quentin is an Advisory Board Member for Cause Initiatives for Youth and Community and part of the Development Committee for the Leading Learning Conference, a provincial information communication technology conference that draws educators from across the province of Ontario. He has developed curriculum and resources for the Ontario Ministry of Education, ILC/TV Ontario, Harcourt Canada, The Learning Partnership and other organizations. Quentin has worked as an online mentor, developed/taught online and blended courses, and moderated online discussions. He is also the founder of http://www.TheCanadianTeacher.com, where he has developed and shared a broad range of materials and tools geared specifically to Canadian educators. You can keep up with Quentin’s activities and writing by visiting his blog at http://www.TeachingHacks.com. Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 5 Should You Read This? • • • • • • With all the information on the web how can we make sense of it all? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to filter out what we want from what we don't want? Do you visit the same web sites again and again looking for new content; wouldn't it be nice to automate this task? Would you like to share great resources that you find with other teachers or your students? Would you like to have access to new tools and resources without having to spend hours searching for them? Would you like to make connections with other teachers? If you have asked yourself any one of these questions then the answer that you are looking for is RSS and Atom feeds. They are here to stay and feed offers a new face to the World Wide Web that we are already familiar with. What is RSS and Atom feed? RSS is an acronym that stands for Rich Site Summary, though it’s often alternatively defined as Really Simple Syndication. The simplest definition of RSS is an eXtensible Markup Language(XML) format that uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for representing information about resources on the World Wide Web. Similarly, Atom is another format based on XML technology. You might see buttons like these: There are a few types of feeds commonly found on web sites RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom. There is quite a bit of debate about which type of xml format is better, but for the purpose of simplicity I will often be referring to feeds as RSS. RSS and Atom feeds are the structures that organize content which is being updated on a regular basis in order for others to retrieve it. This content could be articles, blog posts, photos, PDF documents, PowerPoint Presentations, audio files, video files, or other applications. If the content is the flesh of an orange then a feed would be its skin. The skin keeps the flesh in place so that it is easier to transport. Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 6 In 2003, RSS was more commonly associated with weblogs, known as blogs. Blogs and RSS feeds almost seemed to be an isolated cause and effect. Where there was a blog, you would find an RSS feed. As this visualization shows, RSS feeds can more recently be seen being used for many different purposes. Bloggers created a different type of media, by adding audio and video files as the primary content to their posts. Listeners can subscribe to their favourite audio blog, also called a podcast, and download the audio files to be played on personal computers or mobile devices. This created a media which resembles a radio show, where the shows are almost always archived for future listening. While video blogs, also known as vlogs, created a type of archived video shows. All types of web applications are using feeds to share data within social networks, through enhancing accessibility to productivity tools, research tools, watch lists, and sharing peer created content. The numbers of applications that are using feeds are growing daily. New tools have come into existence because of RSS feeds and the trend seems to be continuing to grow. These tools allow you to remix and reformat the content of a feed in a countless different ways. Web 2.0 – I didn’t Know There was a 1.0? There has been shift from a World Wide Web that is “read only” to a Web that is being described as the “Read Write Web.” Instead of content that was for the most part static, we are starting to see the ability to remix content in different ways, in order to suit our needs. The Web is evolving to become more like an area for social and idea networking. The web surfer negotiates the connections within a social or Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 7 idea network, exchanges bits of content, creates something new, and then the cycle begins again. XML content, but RSS and Atom feeds in particular, is increasingly becoming a standard for sharing data between these web applications. If you look at the idea of publishing web pages, we would consider the read web as something that was more inclined for the geeks. Where there was some need to understand a server-side language, use FTP, maybe html, or a number of tools to create and publish web content. Now, in less than ten minutes you could set-up a weblog on Blogger.com and have your first idea posted. It would probably take you longer to come up with the ideas for the first post than to setup the weblog. I would call this a transformation from geek to sleek. What is a Folksonomy and Tagging? Like RSS, folksonomies and tagging are often part of the transformation to the “Read Write Web.” The term folksonomy (derived from "folk" and "taxonomy") was coined by Thomas Vander Wal and refers to a form of organic categorization that comes from internet users as they encounter new information. Think about when you are looking at an image or a web site, you may think of a number of key descriptive words that help you to remember that resource. These keyword descriptions are referred to as tagging a resource. Combine these tags with software that makes the categorization of these resources relatively simple and you have created a personal searchable database of information. By doing the little bit of work it takes to organize your own resources, you are spreading the workload in organizing information on the internet. When you look at all of these personal databases as a whole, patterns begin to emerge where similar resources have similar tags. The categorization process on a macro level evolves in a democratic type of process, where certain tags gain prominence over other tags when used to describe types of Quentin D’Souza http://www.TeachingHacks.com 8 resources. General categories emerge and are followed by sub-categories, but these are all defined through a consensus model based on group interaction. You can find folksonomies and tagging on many different types of web services that include, but are not limited to, social software components, blogs, bookmark storage, and photograph sharing. Issues around Tagging Tagging and folksonomies are not without its share of challenges. One of the common problems that are identified in tagging is the misspelling of tags within the tag cosmos. The result is leaving orphaned content that has little benefit to the group at large. Another issue is deciding on what the content you are tagging is actual about. Everyone has different perceptions of what they are reading. In this case, services that create folksonomies that appeal to a particular group of people, would be more successful in tagging material similarly. An example would be K12 educators tagging resources using the same service ScuttlEdu (http://blogs.zanestate.edu/mybookmarks/). Ideas: 1. Categorize lesson plans and learning objects at the province/state, school board, or school levels. 2. Categorize documents at a school or school district level in order to create a searchable structures that use descriptions based on those who use those documents. 3. Connect educators together who share similar interests through tags. 4. Unintended learning through the discovery of resources and information shared by others. 5. Create a unique shared tag where anyone can add to a specific set of resources by knowing the unique tag word, which could then be aggregated through RSS feeds. What is Creative Commons? Online publishing is a public representation of the physical school. It is important that any materials posted in the school or class web content are originals and not a copy from another website, book, magazine or any other medium. This includes text, images, buttons, or other media. Copyright law differs from country to country and need to be followed, bu..."

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