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Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments

Event Cycle 4

Managing Information

Sept 22 to 24, 2005

With guest expert: ElderBob Brannan | Streams

Read, view, listen, do:

ElderBob has set up a blog and he and Vance have seeded the Moodle and this page with a set of links that we can all explore. The links are designed to explain what RSS is and how you can 'aggregate' or feed, or harvest and display those links through Bloglines. The presentations explain why you would want to do this and how educators can benefit from an understanding of RSS feeds. The goal of this Event Cyclone will be to get partipants in this course working with RSS feeds through Bloglines. Chats are being scheduled Saturday, Sept 24 and Sunday the 25th in order to provide live-online advice. ElderBob is expecting a hurricane to come a-knockin' long about Sunday and might not have power at that time, so y'all try and get there Saturday.

• ElderBob has pointed us to this wiki, which he invites us to explore: the networkedlearning » knowledge sharing wiki http://networkedlearning.wikispaces.org/knowledge+sharing
• Here is ElderBob's "Keep it Simple" posting with the links he wants you to explore: http://elderboblog.typepad.com/ontheroad/2005/09/keep_it_simple_.html and here are the links:
  • RSS, from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/RSS_(protocol) )
  • RSS, from BBC ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm )
  • How to Set Up Bloglines as Your Aggregator or Using Bloglines (this one is a bit more detailed)( http://weblogs.about.com/cs/aggregators/ht/bloglines.htm ) and ( http://preetamrai.com/weblog/archives/2005/04/25/bloglines-how-to-keep-track-of-hundreds-of-blogs-and-some-news-and-some-podcasts-and-some-flickrs-photos-etc-etc/
  • Great tutorial on How to Set Up RSS Feeds on Firefox Browser, from findfeeds.net ( http://findfeeds.net/?p=26 )
  • Content Feeds With RSS 2.0, by IBM ( http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-rss20/ )
  • RSS Compendium from Google ( http://allrss.com/ )
  • RSS Space Defined from the Read/Write Blog and a chart derived from the data. ( http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002818.php ) and ( http://readwriteweb.jot.com/WikiHome )
  • GMail as an RSS Feeder ( http://www.cs.utexa s.edu/~karu/gmailrss/ )
  • The Birth of the Newsmaster: The Network Starts to Organize Itself, by Robing Good. ( http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/19/the_birth _of_the_newsmaster.htm )
• An RSS feed to ElderBob's parent blog has been set up at our course Moodle (in the right hand frame). It should be updated automatically with the most recent three of eBob's postings to his blog http://elderboblog.typepad.com/ontheroad/

These links provide more information about how blogs and RSS feeds (which are means of gleaning information efficiently from a number of blogs and other frequently updated web sites) might be used in educational settings:

• Read: David Warlick on Blogosphere as collaborative environment. http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2005/08/15/four-reasons-why-the-blogsphere-might-make-a-better-professional-collaborative-environment-than-discussion-forums/
• View and listen to: Jay Cross - Collaboration Supercharges Performance. http://macromedia.marketing.pr.breezecentral.com/p51746849
  A presentation in Breeze, which we saw demo'd at our synchronous chat event, Sept 18, 2005

Learn about: RSS and aggregators; excellent resources from Will Richardson ...

• Presentation: Recording: "RSS: The New Killer App for Educators". Description page: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=679449; direct link: https://www.elluminate.com/site/pmtg.jnlp?psid=d429011575.202706
• RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators, http://www.weblogg-ed.com/rss_for_ed
• Will's blog, Weblogg-ed dot com: http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Blogging and Language Learning - See: http://www.vancestevens.com/blogs.htm

Barbara Dieu is mentioned there as an energetic proponent of blogging and webpresence in language learning.

• Bee wrote 'the book' on blogging in language learning, here: http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/blog04/
• Bee's latest project: http://www.dekitra.org
• A recent interview with Barbara Dieu: http://www.britishcouncil.org.br/elt/novidades.asp?index=1
• Bee blogged her participation in a session with Michael Coghlan here: http://beewebhead.blogspot.com/2005/01/cutting-edge-tools-in-esl-classroom.html . You can find a description of the session "Cutting Edge Tools in the ESL Classroom" led by Michael Coghlan from the ELS Conference in Adelaide on January 21, 2005 here: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?login=1&uid=4A01A3C385C11F29DAD2562B3336C1D8&cid=157024&go=638193 and the direct link is here: https://www.elluminate.com/site/pmtg.jnlp?psid=d1796375514.193026

And, what you should do now ...

eBob and Vance are planning to hold live-online chats on Saturday, Sept 24 and Sunday the 25th, meeting initially at http://www.tappedin.org . The purpose will be to help participants here set up and use bloglines accounts. So ...

• Open an account at http://bloglines.com/ (you can see how this tool is used from the materials referenced above; for example Will Richardson's Recording: "RSS: The New Killer App for Educators" at http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=679449)
• Locate RSS feeds of blogs, YahooGroups postings, etc that you follow now or that you think would be useful
• Share these with other participants through our Moodle forum set up for that purpose.
• Set up bloglines feeds for the RSS streams you'd like to follow.
• Come to the Saturday or Sunday chats at http://www.tappedin.org to get online help or discuss further. (eBob is setting a time for the Saturday chat; the one on Sunday is between noon GMT and 2 or 3 hours after that)

Streams ...

By the end of the course, many of us had set up streams in Bloglines and other accounts. Dennis Oliver was kind enough to share the following:

I'm glad to know I saw a bit of what you had in mind for this thread. The links that I gave are only the beginning of my feeds list; I hope to include more here very soon, and I hope they will be useful to someone other than me.

Multiliteracy-Related / Educational Technology

• "Aaron Campbell's http://e-poche.net/
• Educause's "Technology in Academia—Connect@Educause"
• Jay Cross' "Internet Time Blog"
• "Robin Good's Learning—Educational Technologies: Latest News"
• "OLDaily: The Latest News in Distance Education and New Instructional Media" (Stephen Downes)
• ElderBob's "On the Road to the Royal Library at Nineveh"

Distance Education

• distance-educator.com
• Ismael Peña's "ICTlogy"

Blogging

• two of Barbara Dieu's sites: Bee-coming a Webhead" and Bee Online
• Graham Stanley's "BLOG-EFL"
• Will Richardson's "Weblogg-ed News"

ELT-Related Personal Blogs

• Tom Leverett's blog from Southern Illinois

General ELT

• ESL Monkeys: Free ESL Lesson Plans
• Grammar Teacher

Vocabulary / Interesting Words / Dictionaries

• Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day"
• the "Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary"
• "Word Usage ('About Choosing the Right Word or Varying your Word Choice')"

As a resource of innovative sites, here are the The Edublog Awards nominations for 2005
http://incsub.org/awards/the-edublog-awards-2005/

Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme

• Edublogs http://www.edublogs.org/
• Ed Tech Talk http://www.edtechtalk.com/
• Elgg http://elgg.net/
• Stephen’s Web http://www.downes.ca/

Best newcomer

• Adventures of the 14 day thesis/beyond the 14 day thesis http://insidethewhitehouse.uniblogs.org/
• Blog of proximinal development http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/
• FLOSSE Posse http://flosse.dicole.org/
• Remote Access http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/
• Smelly Knowledge http://forestfortrees.edublogs.org/
• Stuart Yeates’s blog http://connect.educause.edu/blog/StuartYeates

Most influential post, resource or presentation

• A Nomad’s Guide to Learning and Social Software http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2005/11/_a_nomads_guide.html
• Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/networks.htm
• EdTechTalk No. 20 part 2: Downes & Richardson http://edtechtalk.com/EdTechTalk_20_Part2_Will_Richardson_Stephen_Downes
• EdTechTalk No. 24 Ganley http://worldbridges.com/livewire/?p=93
• E-learning 2.0 http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1
• Future VLE - The Visual Version http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20050125170206

Best designed/most beautiful edublog

• D’Arcy Norman Dot Net http://www.darcynorman.net/
• The HUMlab Blog http://blog.humlab.umu.se/
• Inline Comments http://web.mit.edu/benbr/notes/
• Professional Lurker http://www.professional-lurker.com/
• Room 208 http://bobsprankle.com/blog/
• Tangled up in Purple http://www.nixit.co.nz/wordpress/
• Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog http://blog.loaz.com/timwang/

Best library/librarian blog

• Caveat Lector http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/
• Infomancy http://www.schoolof.info/infomancy/
• Joyce Valenza’s NeverEnding Search http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/
• Librarian.net http://www.librarian.net/
• Open Stacks http://openstacks.net/os/
• The Shifted Librarian http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

Best teachers blog

• Blog of proximal development http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/static-page-1/
• Edublog Insights http://anne.teachesme.com/
• Gardner Writes http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/
• The Open Classroom http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/
• Room 208 http://bobsprankle.com/blog/

Best audio and/or visual blog

• Connect Learning http://davidwarlick.com/connectlearning/
• Ed Tech Posse http://edtechposse.ca/
• Ed Tech Talk http://edtechtalk.com/
• Pod-EFL http://www.pod-efl.com/
• SmartHistory http://www.smarthistory.blogspot.com/
• TILT TV http://tilttv.blogspot.com/
• Vlog 3.0 http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vlog/

Best example/case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning

• A Case Study of Pre-service Teachers Learning http://www.educationaltechnology.ca/couros/publications/Nolan-EdMedia2005.pdf
• Assessment by blog http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=62
• EdTechTalk No. 24: Ganley http://worldbridges.com/livewire/?p=93
• iGeneration http://i-generation.blogspot.com/
• Polar Science http://www.polarscience.ca/
• Radcliffe Riverside LIVE http://radclifferiverside.com/live/index.php?automodule=blog
• Rhythm in Architecture http://dyg-brainmaps.buzznet.com/user/
• vSKOOL.org http://www.vskool.org/www/vskoolblog.html

Best group blog

• BizDeansTalk http://www.deanstalk.net/
• Dekita.org http://dekita.org/
• The HUMlab blog http://blog.humlab.umu.se/
• Kairosnews http://kairosnews.org/
• Worldbridges http://worldbridges.com/livewire/

Best individual blog

• bgblogging http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/
• Ideant http://ideant.typepad.com/
• OLDaily http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm
• Weblogg-Ed http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Events ...

• September 23 - Rita Zeinstejer presented "Synchronous and Asynchronous Tools Aiding the Development of Online Communities of Practice" in Santa Fe (a city 150 km away from Rosario), at the 2005 FAAPI Conference for EFL teachers in Argentina. Considering the impact synchronous greetings have on live audiences, once the whole presentation with explanations and sample sites is over, Rita will invite those of you who can make it, to come in on YM, at about 11:30 am GMT, on Friday 23 September, and say "hi" to a hopefully big audience of teachers from all over the country, and maybe, if time and conditions allow, say a little bit about our experience as Webheads.
• Vance and ElderBob set up times to meet with participants in this course to assist with putting into practice the competencies covered above. The venue was http://www.tappedin.org and the times were noon GMT Saturday and Sunday Sept. 24/25, 2005, as announced in the YahooGroup list and in the Moodle forum and calendar. Buthaina Al Othman, Dafne Gonzales, Dennis Oliver and Angela Waigand attended.
• Check http://www.vancestevens.com/online_events.htm for other activities at this time

©opyright 2005 by Vance Stevens