Monthly Archives: March 2009

Mar 17 2009

My Alltop

I had written a long time ago about the Alltop service (If you could have one start page).  This resource, directed by Guy Kawasaki takes the concept of RSS and Bookmarks and Favourites to the next level.

Instead of you going around and aggregating the resources that you find in your RSS reader, you let Alltop do it for you.  The resources are updated system-wide hourly and you’re always on top of things.

There are a lot of advantages to this sort of thing.

First, and probably most appealing to most folks, you can get the benefits of RSS without the effort.  Instead of you configurating your Flock feeds or Google Reader or whatever you’re using, let Alltop do it for you.  With a quick mouseover, you get a preview of the content of the last five posts on the service.  A click takes you directly to the feed or to the entry.

But, there are other advantages.

Since all of the resources are categorized under major titles, you can quickly head to, say, Education and read the feeds of the top educational bloggers and resources.  That’s nice.

It’s also nice in the fact that Alltop has done the work to find and put all of these resources in one spot for you.  There are literally hundreds of categories for you to browse and read when the fancy hits you.

The problem, and problem probably isn’t the word for it – perhaps challenge – is that there is so much there that you can spend a great deal of time wandering from category to category finding feeds to read.

This morning, the next logical step was announced.  A new service “My Alltop” allows you to create your own account on Alltop to create your own personal directory of resources that you visit.  This resolves the challenge above.  If you have a resource in education and baseball, for example, My Alltop lets you create your own page to aggregate feeds across categories.  Make sure that you periodically check out the big categories to make sure that you are not missing anything!

This personalization should let you find the content of your morning read easier.  It’s all in one spot.  Plus, you can share your content with others.  So, if you want to see what I’m reading, follow the link to http://my.alltop.com/dougpete.  A link quickly lets you share your Alltop page to Facebook and Twitter so that others can check out what you’re reading.

It looks and feels like a pretty good launch.  Kudos to the folks at Alltop.  There is room to grow – it would be nice to start a community of researchers who could share and share alike – it would be nice to have control over your personalization colours – it would be nice to have counters on the resources so that you can see where you are trending – it would be nice to have a My Alltop badge for webpages and blogs – but if the evolution of this service serves as public record, you know that there will be more functionality built into it all the time.

Take the time to watch this tutorial to see how it works.

More than ever, you need to consider making this your start page.  After all, if you could only have one start page…

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Mar 17 2009

links for 2009-03-16

Mar 16 2009

The Reach and Power of Viral

Over the weekend, I was “tagged” by Skip Zalneraitis who goes by the handle @skipz on Twitter.  We’re friends there and also on Facebook.  So, I check out what it was that I was tagged to do.

The tag was to create a new note on Facebook and it starts out by asking you to identify six names that you go by.  Hmmm.  Mild interest in this one.  So, I follow the instructions which essentially means to copy and paste the template that Skip sent me to create my own after erasing his answers.

There were about 10 different questions that you had to answer.  Approximately half of them were no brainers and about half of them had me thinking about what would be actual content.  I like to take a little dig at my kids when I create something like this so made reference to Bubby’s pancakes and The Wease’s choice of buying Dr. Zip.  The whole process actually took me a while to do, as I paid attention to content and format.

Then, the final step in these things is to “tag” others.  This step can often be construed as being annoying, along the line of spam and intrusive but it’s March Break and perhaps some of my friends would like something interesting to do.  So, I tag the usual suspects.  Then, there’s my friend Dana in Houston and in typing her name, Facebook suggests others so I thought  “What the heck…”.

I probably ended up tagging a dozen folks and sent it off.  I half expected “don’t bug me” emails in response.  What I got quite surprised me.  Other folks actually seemed to be interested and completed the form.  Since one of the rules is to tag the original, I got immediate notice that other notes had been created.  I read them with interest and noticed that these people had tagged others, some of whom I had already tagged.


Doug’s Crappy Graph of how viral works

So, I’m thinking that the whole process looks like the above.  This morning, I decided to log back into Facebook and see how things were going.  There were even more of the people that I had tagged who had completed their notes.  Interestingly, there were other “friends” that had completed the exercise.  When I checked them out, there was no common thread other than me.  So, they had arrived by some other path.

Given the scope of this, and the effort that goes into its creation, I’m starting to think.  If I enjoyed doing this and my friends enjoyed doing this and other people enjoyed doing this, maybe there’s something to this.

In the classroom, what would happen if a teacher started an activity like this and tagged a few students to complete the form.  Instead of a question like “What did you eat today”, imagine that the question was “Name three things that a Blue Jay eats”.  Instead of instant recall, imagine if students had to get onto the internet or their own personal research network to find the answers.

Could we make education viral?

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Mar 16 2009

links for 2009-03-15

Mar 15 2009

Habits

I just returned from a visit to my native Clinton.  It’s over three hours for the drive and there is lots to see on the trip.  Ever the educator, I always give the school and its grounds a once over.  I notice, as I go by, the number and importance of environmental issues and the student impact on the environment that is quite apparent from the road.

You see recycling bins, compost stacks, reforestration, chip paths, etc. and it’s absolutely great to see.  These are the things that make a significant difference in students attitudes and habits.  The hope is that these good deeds will be taken home and that respect for the environment ensues.  We hope that everything that is done at the school impacts the home to get a bigger return on the time and effort spent at school making it happen.

As I wrap up a week thinking about the new Grade 10-12 Computer Studies curriculum, I can’t help but hope that the same appreciation and respect for the use of the computer follows students hope to make them better electronic citizens and that these skills become part of their daily routine.  Particularly in the Grade 10 course, there are two important sections.  Sections A4. Home Computer Networking and A5. Maintenance and Security, contain curriculum expectations that address current and future needs for anyone who intends to use a computer and go online safely.  In this day and age, isn’t that so important?

As noted in a previous post, the Ministry of Education has not made any computer studies course compulsory.  However, I hope that computer studies teachers province-wide emphasize the important and relevance of the content of this new curriculum for those who will be growing up in a digital life.  It’s incredibly good content and better computer users will be the result of being a successful student in these courses.

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Mar 15 2009

links for 2009-03-14

Mar 14 2009

Why Wouldn’t You?

If you’re still looking for a reason to get and stay connected via Twitter, then you need to check this story from CNN.  I believe it to be a glimpse into the future.

Police department twittering?  Why not?  It’s free and a massive way to send a message to the masses.  Sure, we have television and newspapers for local news stories but that requires that you are in a time and location to be able to access it.

With the mobile web, a blast from a central source has the potential to hit you where you happen to be and to be persistent should you need to be away from it for the moment.  Think of the possibilities.

As you drive into Toronto as an example, there are overhead signs on the 401 that let you know of impending traffic issues.  But, there’s nothing to let you know that there’s an immediate issue on Dundas Street.  However, if police or a traffic control source could send out a tweet, you could check it as you rush out the door or on your mobile device.

As more people embrace this technology and start to leverage it as a key part of their daily lives, there is an enormous potential to change the way that we do business.  Unlike bloated websites with their sponsorships and massive links to advertising and every other related resource, Twitter messages are short, to the point, and on topic.

What more do you need when you need to immediately know the facts?

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Mar 14 2009

links for 2009-03-13

Mar 13 2009

Reflections from Rollout

It was an incredible day for a rollout.  In a cool room, we dug into the new Computer Studies document and spent a very productive time doing it.  There was a great deal of good and creative discussion and ideas to help us be successful with the mandatory implementation for September 2009.

One of the sections in the new curriculum talks about the role of ICT in Computer Science.  While this may seem like a natural fit, the question becomes how?  In 2004, I had created the Computer Science Project Research and Development Webquest.  Even at that time, the suggestion was to use a wiki to allow the students the opportunity to build and collaborate.  I am going to have to dig back into that webquest and make it relevant for the new curriculum.  I’m thinking that it won’t be a too terribly big job but more than ever the use of wikis supports student learning well.

Whenever you dig into the online tools, you do have to do so with your eyes open.  We need to be constantly aware of the “low hanging fruit”.  There are some pretty low level applications where the inclusion really doesn’t make the use worthwhile.  We need to constantly strive for the best that’s out there.


I ran into the above graphic on the Visual Bloom‘s wiki yesterday.  Quite graphically, it reminds us that not all applications have the same educational payoff.  As we incorporate these things into our practice, we need to reach higher and push to get the best value for the time spent online.

And, certainly for teachers, look and add your own resources to delicious using the tab icsxx.

It was an invigorating day and I know that the real winners will be the students who enjoy the new ICS courses.

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Mar 13 2009

links for 2009-03-12