A tale of two social networks

I’ve recently found out about two social networks. You’d think we were social networked-out, so what do these have to offer that others don’t. Book lovers and celebrity chasers, read on.

Making your photos interactive: Annotation, Photostory, Voicethread and Animato

I hope the information I provide is better than this!

OK, so you have some great pictures (or your class does). What can you do with them? Apart from merely display them, that is.

Clearly, you can use them as your own personal bank of clip art, which is what I tend to do. But is there nothing else?

One thing you can do is to make them interactive, and you can do so in at least four ways....

Web 2.0 in professional development

In this article I look at the how Web 2.0 applications can contribute to one’s professional development. The issues I address include:

• What exactly is continuing professional development (CPD)? Has the definition changed because of the technology available?
  
  
• Inertia and technology
  
  
• Ad hoc opportunities for CPD
  
  
• Managing one's professional development
  
  
• Dealing with information overload
  
  
• The application form dilemma

A busman's holiday

A busman's holiday

I’m on holiday. A busman’s holiday, to be exact. Doing plenty of writing, exploring, catching up. Read on for information about some things I’ve been doing and articles coming up, and an article I wrote about identity theft, but not as we usually understand it…

I’m not sure if the term “busman’s holiday” is known outside the UK, so here is a quick explanation. It means doing the same thing on holiday as you do in everyday life, like a bus driver going on a motoring holiday, according to Nigel Rees in “A Word in Your Shell Like”.

So, first, as a bit or relaxation, I wrote an article about identity theft, but in a different sense to the usual. That’s here:

http://terryfreedman.blogspot.com/2007/08/identity-theft.html

Then I wrote an article about professional development, which I shall post here shortly, followed by an exploration of Voicethread, Animato, and Flickr (again). All that is in an article too, which will be published here shortly. Both of those articles are from the forthcoming second edition of “Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New Worldwide Web”.

I also took part in a Flashmeeting meeting, which Paul Harrington has reported on. It was stupendous, and Paul is writing a practical article for this website about its usefulness in education. And a teacher called Lisa Parisi is working on an article for me about the practical things to take into account when running in-service courses for co-workers.

And I’ve been researching for an article I’ve been commissioned to write about Web 2.0 for the Times Educational Supplement. I’ll let you know when that appears. I’m doing it on digital photography, so if you have any great tips, websites or applications, let me know (credit given if used, of course)!

I have found time to relax too, as you can see from my latest pictures.

And now I am going off to relax a bit more — with a podcast!

 

How to create a blogroll

A blogroll is a list of blogs that one is reading, or at least that one subscribes to, and which one recommends to others. This article is a quick how-to guide on how to set one up.



And what are you reading today?

As you can imagine, it would be awful to have to add the RSS feeds for each blog to a web page using HTML coding. Fortunately, life has been made rather easier than that.

Read on to find out more.

Twitter: an evaluation

When Twitter first appeared on the scene, I thought it sounded like a complete waste of time.

But as more and people I respect started singing its praises, I thought I ought to give it a whirl.

That was a couple of months ago, and here are my conclusions.

Conversation in an electronics store...

One would think that a prerequisite for working in a store (any store) would be an ability to listen. In an ideal world one might hope for a passing acquaintance with the product area in question. The relationship between my patience with sales “assistants” (I use the term guardedly) and my age is an inverse one. Thus it was that the following conversation left me fuming…