sooo DEL.ICIO.US

Time to start talking about social networking sites. You may be familiar with MySpace, Facebook, and too many others to name so instead of trying, lets just talk about how they can help you learn. The first one we will address is DELICIOUS. Otherwise known as del.icio.us.

Delicious, (Im leaving out the periods from this point on because Ive been typing all day and don't need any extra key strokes if possible) is a Social Bookmarking site. That means people use the site as a place to bookmark their favorite websites. Its a social site because the users supply the content. The users can make friends and set up their own networks with people they have favorite sites in common with. And users create notes and tags to highlight each site.

So how can this work for helping you with my courses:

1. This is a great place to do research. If you go into Google, and type in "Hurricane Katrina" you will get over 13 million hits. There is no way you are going to navigate through more than a page or two of what comes up because it is way too much. If you go to delicious and type in the same term, you will ONLY get 2800 hits. That's because people have already done the sorting for you. They come across a site on a topic they enjoy and save it to delicious. Then the rest of us come on and check out which sites people like best out of all that research. People mark their favorites by saving the site and the more times a site has been saved the more likely you will find something useful in it, or at least something people enjoy.

2. Unlike many search engines, when you look up a term on delicious you will get a very short keyword description of what the article is about. These types of keywords are known as tags.
Click here for a demonstration

3. If you would like to collaborate with students in our course, you can set up a network of our students and you can all share your favorite sites from your research. Essentially, if you are sharing then you will have less research to do, which is a wonderful thing.

Check out this helpful vid:

Oral Projects

Two questions: This is an online school Mr. Plough, how can I do oral presentations? 2ndly, Why would I even want to?

Okay, let me answer the second question first. I've been trying to emphasize the fact that I really don't care how you complete your projects. If you want to make videos, websites, powerpoints, online slideshows, essays, or any other method I haven't yet mentioned, Im all for it. What I really want is for you to complete your lessons and show me you have learned something. Back to oral presentations and your 2nd question. Here is my answer.......some people would simply rather talk. Are you one of those people, can you communicate your ideas better by saying them out loud? If so, Oral Projects might be something to consider. Back to the first question in the very first sentence of this blog.

I can imagine three possible ways for you to do oral projects, but there may be more so shoot me ideas when you get them.

1. You come find me on campus and we will talk about whatever lesson/assessment you want to turn in. All I ask is that you are able to meet the requirements I laid out in the project/assessment instructions.

2. You call me, we talk about it over the phone, same rules apply for requirements.

3. Lastly, what I think is the most interesting option, and the one most likely to add to your skill bank for the future, you make an audio recording using a piece of software and you send me the recording. I imagine this goes something like, you are sitting home talking into a microphone, a program on your computer is recording it, when you are done the program saves it in a .wav, .mp3, or other audio format and you send it to me. I open it up, listen, take a few notes, and give you a grade or ask for more. Sounds easy right, lets do this. Oh yeah, buy a microphone if you don't have one yet.

Im going to include some links to free software programs below, but you may have one on your computer at home, or know of an online application that would work for this (send me the info). Note: read the descriptions of each program and decide what would work best for you.

Audacity (recommended)

Digital Dictation
Free Sound Recorder
Pocket Voice Recorder
Magix Music Maker (you can use this to make songs for projects, but can also just record your voice)

Zoho Show

I played around for a little while last night on a program called Zoho Show. Its an online program that allows you to build presentations using a format similar to PowerPoint. If you don't have PPT than this is a great, free alternative. It's even better than PPT in some ways: you can post your presentations online (you get your own page on ZOHO's website), embed them into a blog (see below), put them on your own website, Google Home Page, and a number of other online applications. Also, you can submit them to me by just sending me a link for where ever you posted your presentation. If you have a Flickr Account, it links right to the pictures you have uploaded and you can also access pics, multimedia, and documents that exist on your hard drive. Its really easy to use, and its fun to create. I would love for you to complete your assignments/essays/projects/reviews etc. using this program

To submit to me: While in your project select Publish > Public URL > copy and paste and either email it or put in the Dropbox

In addition to Zoho Show, there are a number of other programs that you can use from Zoho that might replace your need for Microsoft Office.