Had some fun with Wordle. After playing with TweetStats yesterday, wanted to get those tags and use them in Wordle. Unfortunately they weren’t weighted. So result is a bit bland but still fun.

Wordle is set up to link with del.icio.us and because it does weight those tags, the result is much more impressive!

Embedding in a blog post requires a little editing of embed code – need to take out all the spaces.

Could be used to introduce a topic in class? As result of a discussion thread?

First things first, obviously sharing “knowledge, methods, stories, cases, tools, documents” as described by Wenger is impossible if staff members don’t even know about each other’s existence. So we’ve set about establishing the needed connections. Monthly e-Learning Lunches began in the middle of 2007 and have a growing and loyal attendance (yay!). I’m also trying to introduce practitioners to each other just-in-time. Recently I invited one of our Business & Computing lecturers, to demonstrate her online course to a group of lecturers who are just making the first steps in putting their courses online. I say demonstrate, but what I really wanted was for her to show off, because she & her colleague really challenged themselves, always focusing on keeping the course flexible, project-based and learner-centred. The course looks great, and the demonstration was much appreciated by the lecturers.

Unfortunately, I got so busy that shock, horror, I forgot to thank Kim properly. About to send her a thank-you note, I reconsidered, a. it’s kinda lo-tech and b. doesn’t match my tactics this year. I’ve been getting excited about the concept of viral professional development as described by Jennifer Jones (aka injenuity) as I see VPD as a factor in the creation & maintenance of our community of practice. So starting today instead of notes, e-cards or chocolate fish (very popular in New Zealand) to say thank you, I will instead undertake a little hidden VPD and share a cool tool, neat resource or activity idea that I know matches what they are working on.

Here’s my thank-you for Kim, created in Sketchcast explaining my limited understanding of the concept of a critical path. (Note: a little glitch, I could only get Sketchcast to record audio in Internet Explorer, not Firefox.)

Unfortunately it kept echoing, even with echo regulation on, sometimes hearing yourself back a minute and a half later. And the others’ volumes kept alternating between crystal clear and deathly whispers. Predictably bad when people were talking at the same time. We concurred that Tokbox could really use a chat function, to exchange advice about improving settings when sound is off. Now we were polluting the twitter-stream (sorry tweets). As the Aussies were chatting happily, Amanda and I left early.

Simon B said”different – random strangers on a video call”. To me being on Tokbox tonight was reminiscent of when you were 11 and your parents took you to an acquaintance’s house on a Saturday evening. You’d be introduced to their children and expected to just get on with it. Like then, there were some initial moments of just staring at each other. Then a little bit of shy laughter, followed by more staring. But once you discovered your shared interest (Lego back then, now Ed Tech – still playing with toys) the ice was broken and you felt totally comfortable with the others, to the point that you were happy to make a fool of yourself.

Very lo-tech communication

I’d be up for trying out some more tools across the Tasman. Tools Tuesday anyone?

This is a list of tools, sites and extensions I currently use two or more times per week. And next year around this time (and if I remember) I’ll post another list and compare the two. It should make an interesting experiment.

• Edublogs
• Skype
• MSN Messenger
• Google Search
• Google Desktop
• Bloglines
• Zotero
• Google News
• Google Docs
• Firefox
• Foxmarks
• Google Sync
• Del.icio.us
• PBWiki
• Flickr
• Ning
• Wimba
• Audacity
• Adobe Fireworks
• Adobe Flash
• SnagIt
• Captivate
• Mindomo
• iTunes
• Twitter
• Twitbin
• YouTube
• Last.fm
• knowledgeGarden (USQ)
• Wikipedia
• Amazon
• Bookdepository.co.uk
• Thunderbird
• Gmail
• Outlook

Well it turns out that not only is it educational, it is addictive. How? In a variety of ways. For instance by helping me find neat tools as today I discovered 3 new tools and Adobe AIR in the space of an hour.

This can happen directly and indirectly.

First an example of the indirect way. Will Richardson (willrich45 on Twitter) is one of my fav bloggers and so one of the people I started following on Twitter rightaway. His tweets appear in my Twitter list. And when the following 3 messages cropped up in a short time, it piqued my interest…

willrich45 (@ – W): Wow…only 27 tabs open in Firefox…slow day! 1H Ago

 

willrich45 (@ – W): @tgelston Nope…what is it? 56M Ago

 

willrich45 (@ – W): @tgelston Thanks for the link…the offline reading looks great! 15M Ago

So I decided to visit the other side of the conversation whichWill Richardson was having with tgelston. Now tgelston is not one of the people I’m following, but I can go and have a look at his tweets:

@willrich45 something between tabs and bookmarks about 1 hour ago from im in reply to willrich45

@willrich45 http://tinyurl.com/yrlqrj about 1 hour ago from im in reply to willrich45

This tinyurl led me to tool no. 1: Read It Later, a promising extension for Firefox which allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest..

A more direct route to a new tool is the imprint that most tools leave within a Tweet,  as in this Tweet from kboutelle

@ATC_tobias FYI – if you don’t already know, Moodle Meet times are CST. 8 minutes ago from twhirl in reply to ATC_tobias

From thwirl? Never heard of it. So I clicked on the link and discovered tool no.2 Thwirl which is a twitter desktop client based on the Adobe AIR platform.

And sometimes it gets even more direct, when someone simply posts a Tweet about a tool they like:

NancyWhite (@ – W): I find twits much easier to read in Snitter – love the images. They allow me to visually scan for people. 1H Ago

And that led me to tool no. 3, Snitter is “Snook’s Twitter”: an Adobe AIR-powered application for twittering. (The tag line is “I can’t believe it’s not Twitter”, har har.)

And the last two apps make mention of being Adobe AIR-powered, another thing I had not heard of until today, but which appears to approach an Apple-like desktop with widgets. This will warrant a closer look…

3 tools and Adobe Air in under an hour. Thru Twitter I’m keeping my finger on the techno-pulse…