Monthly Archives: January 2010

Jan 21 2010

Does it matter?

Or, is it a fallout of our educational system that we need to get a mark for everything?  After all, if you went to school, you lived for the almighty mark.  It was the test (sic) that determined whether you got to progress from one grade to another. At university, it was what determined whether you received a credit in a particular course.  In the big stream of things, at a graded school, you had to move through the grades.  At a university, often a course was a prerequisitie for another.

So, I suppose that it comes as no surprise that you can evaluate yourself on your worth or value on social networks.  These are all over the place.  Here are a couple for Twitter; you might want to evaluate yourself to see how well you fair.

TwitterScore will return a mark between 1-10.

Twittergrader does the same thing, but on a scaled of 1-100.

So, if we’re into assessment and evaluation, why aren’t the scores the same?  Unlike a traditional school, the transparency of this classroom lets you evaluate not only yourself, but friends and others.  Go ahead; try me.  You’ll also be able to find the elitest or highest ranked users or users from any particular location.

I’m thinking of the statements that I give during a typical A&E assessment.  How can you hit the target unless it’s clearly defined?  What is the goal of being on Twitter? What is the test? How can I improve? Does it matter?

Social Bookmarks:

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Jan 21 2010

links for 2010-01-20

Jan 20 2010

Social Media, Social Compass, and Haiti

You cannot help but watch the horror and devastation that is happening in Haiti right now just by listening to the radio or watching the 6:00 news on television.  These are the things that traditional media thrives on for their presence, the slice of audience attention and advertising dollars.  There’s nothing wrong with that; we all have to pay the bills.

I’ve been having this conversation quite a bit about education and the moral compass that we wish to have with our students.  Where do they get that little voice in the back of their head that says “this is right” or “this is wrong”?  I was so fortunate; I grew up in a small community where we knew each other.  I had awesome parents who wanted to make sure that we always did the right thing and they did a good job for the most part.  I knew right from wrong in our small town Ontario context.  I was a Wolf Cub, Boy Scout, active in the church, baby sat, taught in the community, dressed up in a green horse costume and pull a float in the spring parade, and so much more.  It was life for us. 

As I look at some of the realities that today’s students face, I appreciate things even more.  You hear of the hidden poverty, of the single parent, of so much that I just took for granted.  Consequently, we see the development of character building programs in our schools.  In this time of the Haiti situation, it’s so important that these programs have that value for students.  We have a terrific opportunity to show what’s right and what’s wrong and help point the compass towards the good.

There are big stories and big initiatives.  Some of the biggest, you’ll find on the evening news.  Others, you’ll find on major websites.  For example, our district is focused on providing shelter boxes from http://www.shelterbox.ca.  It will be a big initiative at the board level and has the potential to do so much.

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Within the district, it’s big news.  I hope that we are successful in this endeavour.  A friend of mine has a father that is matching contributions that are made.  The Canadian government is matching contributions as well.

There is another side to this.  It’s the smaller stories of people doing good in their own way.  It won’t appear on the news; it won’t appear on a major website; but social media affords everyone the opportunity to chip in with stories about how we’re pulling together, making us all a little closer.

Cowpernicus tells a story today of a kindergarten student who brings in a dollar coin to help the cause even before any major initiatives.  @mrjarbenne shares what his class is doing and asks others to share here.  Follow both links and read on.  Such abilities to share these deeds were not possible in my romantic childhood home. 

But, with social media, we can share and build on these stories.  We can do so much more when everyone knows and shared.  Open a column in your Twitter browser or go to the Twitter search site and do a search for Haiti and just monitor the results.

We all have stories to tell – they won’t appear on the 6:00 news or CTV or CNN – but they’re just as important.  View this truly awful event as an opportunity to help out with relief and help to aim those compasses.

Jan 20 2010

links for 2010-01-19

Jan 19 2010

Upgraded Application

When I went to bed last night, I was a little worried for my blog. You see, one of the posts that appear there is a post made by Delicious of the bookmarks that I had made from the previous day.

I had been monitoring my RSS feed yesterday and had noticed that nothing was appearing from my Delicious feed. For some time now, I have been posting to Diigo and then having Diigo move the links to Delicious. I have a nice group of followers in both places and so want to share with both. But something wasn’t working. I checked my settings in Diigo and it claimed that the account information that I had provided was valid. Hmmmmm.

So I went to bed not knowing what was up. This morning, I awoke and checked with my iPod and sure enough, the post was there so something corrected itself over night. Great. In checking the blog, I noticed that there was also an update for the WordPress application so I applied it. Wow!

It looks like I now have a portable way of doing everything.  Except for putting the tagging at the bottom of this post, and changing the word “denied” to “demoed” (must remember to proofread carefully), it was all written on my iPod Touch and then uploaded to my WordPress account.  Nice.

Social Bookmarks:
Jan 19 2010

links for 2010-01-18

Jan 18 2010

A New Way to Watch Football

If it’s one thing that we learned in education, it’s the power of having a backchannel or discussion ongoing on your favourite social media service during a presentation.  It lets the audience take notes, ask questions, probe deeper, and provide links to internet resources in order to provide added value to the presentation and to the presenter’s words.

How about bringing the same activity to other live events, like say, football!

I figure that the timing is perfect.  I’m already in the doghouse for watching the Minnesota and Dallas game anyway, instead of shovelling snow, so why not bring a world of friends to the game as well.  Twitter is the perfect tool for it.

I’m not alone.  Before the game, I’ll send out a message “Vikings or Cowboys?” to test the waters.  Yesterday, most of the replies came back in favour of the Cowboys.  I didn’t have to wonder what my friend @paulrwood from Texas or @kimberanna_com from Florida would choose but I really enjoy getting the feedback from all over.  I did wonder about @sadone since his team’s old quarterback is now at the helm for the Vikings.  Football fans are so dedicated.  Some even take a picture of their team uniforms in a mirror with an iPhone and then edit it to get rid of the orientation and then change their avatar for the game.

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After all, this is football.

So, how do you monitor the world?  In a closed session like an academic workshop, you’d agree on a hashtag like #Vikings but the audience here is pretty big.  There’s a better way.

I just open up Seesmic Desktop and add a search column looking for the term “Vikings”.  Oh, and for balance, open a column for the other team.

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While at it, make sure that you’re following the teams as well.

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Then, sit back with your laptop on the coffee table and eyes fixed on the television.  It’s as close to being at the game and discussing things with your neighbour in the stands.  Only, this time, you’re getting it world-wide.  After the first game, repeat it for the second.  Your watching experience is greatly enhanced – in almost real-time. Re-live plays, second guess coaches, punt or go for it – everyone’s got an opinion.

Maybe we’ll get to the point where we crowd-source plays!

Even this morning, the conversation continues as everyone gets geared up for the games this weekend.

Social Bookmarks:
Jan 18 2010

links for 2010-01-17

Jan 17 2010

Chrome Extensions

This story received a great deal of attention yesterday.  According to the post, the German government has warned people against the use of Internet Explorer.  Their claim is that the flaw that is unpatched at this time is serious enough to take this stance.  This is an English report that links back to a statement entirely in German and my German is a little rusty so I can’t confirm it.  But, a quick search here and here reveals that there are lots of others reporting the same thing.

I haven’t used Internet Explorer as my main browser for a while now, alternating between Firefox and Chrome.  It’s not for a personal dislike, but I have to work daily on both a Windows and Macintosh platform and so it makes sense in my mind to have a consistency so that I’m not fumbling around looking for things.  Increasingly, I’m using Ubuntu on my netbook so that’s another factor.  Microsoft just hasn’t developed a browser on Linux or Macintosh in recent history.

While poking around on the Microsoft website, I ran into some interesting reading.  The page is entitled “Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding issues in benchmarking and performance analysis” and shows the results of Microsoft testing of Internet Explorer 8 with Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.05.  As I’m sure that you’ve surmised by the version numbers, the report is a tad dated, and in fact, is about a year old now.  The report starts very correctly with the statement that a web browser is probably the most used application on your computer and then goes through an explanation about how to try and obtain a level playing field for testing.  Essentially, the testing involves running all of the browsers without any add-ons or extensions to get true browser speed.  As we all know, many of us add additional functionality to our browsers which makes working in the browser and related functionality increasingly important.

At the bottom of the report, a comparison of load times to various internet sites is given comparing the three browsers.  A quick look at the table clearly puts Firefox in third place.  There are also some results that make you smile.  Internet Explorer has the fastest access time for google.com, Firefox is fastest loading microsoft.com, and Chrome loads msn.com in the shortest time.

It was the results for Chrome that really interested me as I’m spending much of my time in this browser these days.  It performed very well on the tests.  At the bottom of the original report above in fact, a link to download Chrome was provided as an alternative to Internet Explorer.  Personally, I’ve been a long time Firefox/Flock user but have been using Chrome increasingly for two reasons.  First, it loads so quickly.  Secondly, the Windows version currently supports extensions.  I really like the concept of staying in the browser to do much of what I do.  Today, I thought that I would share which extensions I’m currently using and look for some input as to which ones you’re using, if you’re a Chrome user.

My toolbar looks like this:

First, you’ll notice that the colour is not quite the default.  I’ve selected a gun metal theme which it nice and easy on the eyes.  For the rest, here goes.

AdBlock – Version: 1.2.80 AdBlock for Chrome! Removes Facebook ads, Flash animations, and ads from all over the web.

Bit.ly (shorten, share, and track your links) – Version: 0.9 Shorten and share links with bit.ly. Preview the full URLs short urls point to.

Cooliris – Version: 1.11.6.31204 Cooliris is the fastest and most stunning way to browse photos and videos. Effortlessly scroll through media on an infinite 3D Wall.

Diigo Bookmarks – Version: 1.0.3 Save bookmark to Diigo & cross post to Delicious with 1-click. Diigo also captures a page snapshot. Support Twitter/Facebook login.

Evernote Web Clipper – Version: 1.1 Evernote’s Web Clipper extension let you save interesting stuff you see on the web.

Facebook for Google Chrome - Version: 1.3 Extension which lets you read your Facebook news feed and wall. You can also post status updates.

Forecastfox Weather – Version: 1.5.10 Forecastfox, the most popular weather extension for Firefox, now brings international weather to Google Chrome.

goo.gl url shortener – Version: 0.3.4 Shorten url with goo.gl, the new Google url shortener

Google Mail Checker – Version: 3 Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to open your inbox.

Google Quick Scroll – Version: 0.5.5 Quick Scroll lets you jump directly to the relevant bits of a Google search result.

Google Reader Notifier (by Google) – Version: 1.1 Displays the number of unread items in your Google Reader account. Clicking can show a preview popup or open your Reader account.

Google Wave Notifier – Version: 2.2 Displays number of unread Waves.

RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) – Version: 1.9 Adds one-click subscription to your toolbar.

Shareaholic for Google Chrome – Version: 1.0.5 Share, save or email any web page with your friends right from the page you are on using Twitter, Facebook, GMail, and many more!

StumbleUpon – Version: 1.0.20108.2 Discover the best of the web!

VerticalTabs – Version: 2.0.1 Simple & Quick Vertical Tab Extension. Search(filter) Tabs, Drag&Drop Rearrange Tabs, Tabs Counter, Keyboard Control, Vertical View

WOT – Version: 0.9.6 Web of Trust is a safe browsing tool, which warns you about risky sites that cheat customers, deliver malware or send spam.

Now, a word of explanation before you jump all over me for my RSS reading! Sure, there are 1000+ unread items.  This is a result of a lot of great blogs that I follow plus many newspapers and online news sources.  I haven’t disciplined myself to narrow things down, opting instead to refine my speed reading skills.

It all started with Firefox and its concepts of add-ons and now Chrome does support extensions and I’m really enjoying the ability to customize my browser for my habits.

What am I missing?  If you’re an Extension addict like me, what are you using to increase your productivity?

Jan 17 2010

links for 2010-01-16