Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Smell of a Good Website


The feeling I get from following other people's links and searching for good stuff on the internet is the same feeling I get when I'm browsing in a second-hand bookshop. There's always that anticipation of finding some hidden treasure somewhere. I love the smell of old books. I wonder what old websites smell like??!!

Over the last few months I've found a number of blogs and sites which have absolute 'must bookmark' and have harvested them to my delicious page.

Here are some very worthwhile places that you might like to check out (if you haven't already!).

Turning the Supertanker was one of the first e-learning blogs I came across. A great record of one Auckland school's journey in digitising practice. Definitely check out the Resources page, as it has great links to Web 2.0 resources, and the 'How to' page and excellent video tutorials on how to use some these, like Voicethread, Inspiration, and Audacity. Definitely worth a visit.

Andrew Churches' blog has a lot of great information, and the accompanying wiki is a storehouse of ideas and resources for those wanting to integrate e-learning into their classroom. Particularly useful are the Starter Sheets he has here, pdf sheets introducing web 2.0 applications to the classroom, suggesting classroom adaptations, and importantly, tying these in with Bloom's and learning styles.

Will Richardson is usually on everyone's blogroll, and for good reason. He wrote the book (literally) when it comes to using the Read/Write Web in the classroom. You could spend hours exploring this blog and following all the worthwhile links.  This blog introduced me to RSS and the possibilities for its use in learning. If you're unfamiliar with RSS or want a good place to refer other people who are new to it, check out this page. After reading that I set up a bloglines account and now enjoy my blogs coming to me!  

If you enjoy reading my blog (for example) you just click on the RSS Subscribe button in the side bar, and then choose your feed aggregator, and then whenever this blog is updated you'll be notified immediately, rather than having to check to see if there's anything new.

OK, last one for today! Graham Wegner's Open Educator blog is always thoughtful, challenging and refreshing. And his Shared Items are always worth checking out too.  Definitely one to sub on bloglines!

3 comments:

  1. If I were to limit myself to one blog that made me feel fully updated in terms of what's currently being developed in the wordl out there, it would be Nik Peachey's Learning Technology Blog: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/. OK, it's aimed primarily at EFL/ES(O)L teachers, but he evaluates a vast range of online freebies with potential value right across the currriculum in a thoroughly professional way.

    In addition, there's Nik's Daily English Activities: http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/; and Nik's Quick Shout - News, Links and Opinion on Learning, Technology, Web 2.0 and EFL, ESL:
    http://quickshout.blogspot.com/

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  2. Cheers, Tony, have book-marked it on delicious already, and already it may have solved a problem. My class has access to a pod of laptops twice a week, in addition to our classroom desktop computers.

    Unfortunately they have not had Keynote added to them yet, and I've been itching to try a few things. His recommendation of 280Slides looks like a great web-based alternative.

    This is what I love - there's always someone out there with a tip!

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  3. Craig, thanks for the link to Turning the Supertanker, I have now branched out and urge you to check out my new blog http://dakinane.com/blog the resources page now has 82 reviewed tools with links to the parent site. My tutorials page is growing and you might also want to check out the http://opensourcesource.wikispaces.com wiki that I am developing for open source software tutorials for schools. Keep lurking and thanks for the link.

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