How might you use this tool in your personal and professional life? Google Docs enables multiple people in different locations to collaborate simultaneously on the same doc from any computer with Internet access. For example, as a parent helper for my son's Tennis Team I was working with 4 other parents on putting together the information session for new "tennis" Parents for the open house, and they need to write a document, keep track of their work in a spreadsheet, and create a presentation to share with other people involved in the project. We met twice but still all of us could work on this at our own time....
When I made changes to the document, spreadsheet, or presentation, other parents could see them in real time and respond to them immediately. All of us worked on the same docs, so there was no need to go back and forth, comparing and consolidating individual files.
What issues come to mind about using this tool with students (ie, they need email addresses to log-in)?
This my son's response, he is in Grade7:
Google Docs is a great tool that can help students in many ways. Google Docs is a tool used to upload files onto the Internet for later use, this way emailing as attachments is not necessary. Another great feature of Google Docs is the sharing feature. With this feature you can share your documents with friends. You can either invite people to share or you can give them a link that will let them access that specific file. Google Docs is also helpful if you are doing a bid project with other team members. All of you can be editing the file at the same time; this saves the hassle of updating the file after every edit. Google Docs is a service that is very easily acquired; all you need is a Google account.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Thing 15: RSS Feed Revisied!
Is RSS becoming easier to understand?
Yes, it is becoming easier to use and I'm feeling comfortable to use it.
Do you recognize new benefits of using this tool?
Typically, RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries. The content summaries contain just enough information without overwhelming with superfluous details. If interested and want additional information I can click on the item in the feed, accessing the website which contains additional details. As a RSS reader, I can aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy to quickly scan information contained within each feed.
The big benefit to RSS is that I opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that I receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, I simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and then I will not receive any additional updates from that source...very cool!
Do you remember to check your feeds regularly? Has it become a habit (or obsession!) yet?
I have to admit that I forgot all about my Blogline after Thing 5! Great strategic placement of Thing 15...got me back on RSS and I believe this time around I have become more comfortable using it.
Yes, it is becoming easier to use and I'm feeling comfortable to use it.
Do you recognize new benefits of using this tool?
Typically, RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries. The content summaries contain just enough information without overwhelming with superfluous details. If interested and want additional information I can click on the item in the feed, accessing the website which contains additional details. As a RSS reader, I can aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy to quickly scan information contained within each feed.
The big benefit to RSS is that I opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that I receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, I simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and then I will not receive any additional updates from that source...very cool!
Do you remember to check your feeds regularly? Has it become a habit (or obsession!) yet?
I have to admit that I forgot all about my Blogline after Thing 5! Great strategic placement of Thing 15...got me back on RSS and I believe this time around I have become more comfortable using it.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Thing 14 - Bookmarking with Delicious !
Wow! I enjoyed and spent a lot of time with Thing 14. Delicious.com was new to me and I spent a lot of time looking at the tagged websites.
My delicious user name is: http://delicious.com/KalBhatt
I think this social bookmarking will be very helpful to me. Even if I have bookmarked a site; I might not have given it a logical name and so I often find a site and use it once and then forget about it.. Now that I am more aware of the capabilities of tagging I think I will keep better track of sites I am interested in. I really liked how Delicious showed how many other people have added sites to their bookmarks. This helped me filter through the sites and picking and choosing the best ones.
I think Delicious will be a tool that will enhance my productivity. I can actually create different categories for the teachers at my school and add on relevenat grade level websites. Teachers can quickly look to see what sites I have on a given topic and then choose which one will best meet the needs of their students at the time. I also think it would be helpful if all of us shared their bookmarked sites with each other.
I think it is absolutely brilliant to put all of the information we need in one location and that we can access it anywhere we have an Internet connection.
My delicious user name is: http://delicious.com/KalBhatt
I think this social bookmarking will be very helpful to me. Even if I have bookmarked a site; I might not have given it a logical name and so I often find a site and use it once and then forget about it.. Now that I am more aware of the capabilities of tagging I think I will keep better track of sites I am interested in. I really liked how Delicious showed how many other people have added sites to their bookmarks. This helped me filter through the sites and picking and choosing the best ones.
I think Delicious will be a tool that will enhance my productivity. I can actually create different categories for the teachers at my school and add on relevenat grade level websites. Teachers can quickly look to see what sites I have on a given topic and then choose which one will best meet the needs of their students at the time. I also think it would be helpful if all of us shared their bookmarked sites with each other.
I think it is absolutely brilliant to put all of the information we need in one location and that we can access it anywhere we have an Internet connection.
Thing 13: Social Bookmarking & Tagging
Is tagging a useful way to organize your digital resources and why?
Yes, for sure. There have been so many times I have lost all my "Favorites" ..it is very frustrating. II like how through Delicious you can access your tagged sites from any computer. Often I will add sites on my home computer and then will have a hard time finding the same site when I am at school.
What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?
Tools such as social bookmarking have made it easy for Web users to not only have a way of remembering a favorite Web page or website in order to reduce the time spent on searching for them, but also to share these bookmarked Web pages and websites to other Internet users in a collaborative fashion.
As a community of educators the advantage would be to share sites with colleagues. I feel there are so many websites that each individual teacher have saved as their"Favorites" this allows you to create a pool of such websites which if tagged right can be a very good resource. There is a way to import all your present bookmarks into delicious and that might give you a very good start. A second advantage is that you could access the information from anywhere.
DISADVANTAGE:One draw back with this tag-based system is that there are no standards set for the keywords, controlled terms and vocabulary used. This can create a problem, especially since the tag-based system relies on people, and not on any program created in the Internet. Since the people are the ones organizing the tags, there are chances of creating an inconsistent standard and management system for tags. People who create the tags just create them according to their own accord, creating confusion with the other users who rely on the tags to find what they are looking for in these social bookmarking websites.
The lack of standards for tag structures, such as capitalization, singular vs. plural, as well as other similar issues, in social bookmarking makes it susceptible to mistagging. This can be caused by misspelling certain words, by tagging certain subjects using keywords that have two or more meanings, by tagging websites and/or Web pages with unclear tags caused by synonym-antonym confusion, or by using too "personalized" tags that other users will not be able to understand or decipher what the tag is about.
What is important to think about before assigning tags to bookmarks or other Internet content?
I think it is important for you to remember that this information can be shared with others, so you need to be careful what sites you tag. It is also important that you give it a tag that relates well to the bookmarked site so that you and others are able to find it in your tags.
Yes, for sure. There have been so many times I have lost all my "Favorites" ..it is very frustrating. II like how through Delicious you can access your tagged sites from any computer. Often I will add sites on my home computer and then will have a hard time finding the same site when I am at school.
What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?
Tools such as social bookmarking have made it easy for Web users to not only have a way of remembering a favorite Web page or website in order to reduce the time spent on searching for them, but also to share these bookmarked Web pages and websites to other Internet users in a collaborative fashion.
As a community of educators the advantage would be to share sites with colleagues. I feel there are so many websites that each individual teacher have saved as their"Favorites" this allows you to create a pool of such websites which if tagged right can be a very good resource. There is a way to import all your present bookmarks into delicious and that might give you a very good start. A second advantage is that you could access the information from anywhere.
DISADVANTAGE:One draw back with this tag-based system is that there are no standards set for the keywords, controlled terms and vocabulary used. This can create a problem, especially since the tag-based system relies on people, and not on any program created in the Internet. Since the people are the ones organizing the tags, there are chances of creating an inconsistent standard and management system for tags. People who create the tags just create them according to their own accord, creating confusion with the other users who rely on the tags to find what they are looking for in these social bookmarking websites.
The lack of standards for tag structures, such as capitalization, singular vs. plural, as well as other similar issues, in social bookmarking makes it susceptible to mistagging. This can be caused by misspelling certain words, by tagging certain subjects using keywords that have two or more meanings, by tagging websites and/or Web pages with unclear tags caused by synonym-antonym confusion, or by using too "personalized" tags that other users will not be able to understand or decipher what the tag is about.
What is important to think about before assigning tags to bookmarks or other Internet content?
I think it is important for you to remember that this information can be shared with others, so you need to be careful what sites you tag. It is also important that you give it a tag that relates well to the bookmarked site so that you and others are able to find it in your tags.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Widget: Thing12
Scrabble Game: This is from Google Gadgets
NPR: This is from Widgetbox
I think I'll be using this a lot. This is fun!!
NPR: This is from Widgetbox
I think I'll be using this a lot. This is fun!!
Thing 11: Comments on Blog!
I like receiving comments as they give me a chance to look at things in a different perspective. Comments are very good way of communication if efforts are taken to leave meaningful comments. I like looking for others blog and leaving comments and share certain related experiences.
The Last Lecture Video: Thing 10
Kalyani's Blog: I love the great inspirational video called the Last Lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch. This video is from Oprah Winfrey's show where the professor was interviewed.
I think embedding is good as long as youare sure of the youtube availability. I personally prefer to download the video and I have been using Zamzar for all my conversions. It is easy to use.
I think embedding is good as long as youare sure of the youtube availability. I personally prefer to download the video and I have been using Zamzar for all my conversions. It is easy to use.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
