Blog K
(1) Bookmarking and Cloud Computing
for Teachers
Bookmarking is nothing more than a
shortcut to a specific webpage. Bookmarking is a method you can use to save a
web’s URL address (not its content). I have found in recent months; my favorite
list is growing. I have started to try and organize my bookmarks (favorites)
into categories. Going into a teaching career, the list will only continue to
grow.
However, the Cloud could take its
place. Right now “The Cloud” is my filing cabinet in the sky. No more worrying
about backing up or finding a black screen of loss data. I have used the cloud for
a few years now. I think the biggest benefit for me is the fact it frees up
space on my computer. I store all of my digital books, movies and games in the
Cloud. I have only just begun to store education material in the Cloud. For the
past week, I have spent hours on gathering information for an assignment. If I
did not have the Cloud to store my information I would be using a USB drive and
printing the work out in fear the information could be lost. As a teaching
tool, I could use a Cloud storage for students to use. By choosing selected
websites; students will only see the material I want them to see. Even then,
prescreening can become a task trying to find websites that are appropriate for
young students. I can find some very good information I would like to use. The
problem is some of the inappropriate garbage on the sites, in the middle or at
the bottom of the site.
(2) Using Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a community
of computers users. Teachers can tag or bookmark a website of interest to them and
by posting to it on a social bookmarking site it can be shared with other
users. In turn, the posting teacher also has access to the resources on the
site. This type of system is called folksonomy because it has been generated by
a community of teachers interested in organizing data; in the areas of school
curriculum. There are several social bookmarking resources and apps a teacher
can use; such as netTrekker Search, Delicious, Diigo and Goodreads. On these
sites, tagged resources can be grouped together in what is called “tag bundles”
(Maloy, Verock-O’Loughlin, Edward, 2013, pp. 135). I would find this to be
useful and a time saver. As I have found in the past, using Google to search
for information; for students to use can take up a lot of time. Using one of
these sites, I can look for the tags and tags bundles for sites I can use for
class projects. By using one of these social bookmarking resources I can save a
lot of time.
(3) Information Alerts, e-Newsletters,
and RSS Feeds.
Technology is a wonderful thing! E-mail
alerts, E-Newsletters and RSS feeds, are tools to keep people informed and
up-to date on information they are interested in. If you are interested in
wanting to keep up with something of interest to you; create a Google account.
With a Google account you can select which types of e-mails you are interested
in. When this information is available, an e-mail alert will send you that
information of interest when it is available for you to view. If on the other hand, you may only be interested
in one or two sources. You can create an
account or in most cases, all you need to do is sign up and most of the time they
are free (Maloy, Verock-O’Loughlin, Edward, 2013, pp. 135-136 ). I use free
sources for breaking news alerts and banking alerts; both will pop up on my
iphone and ipad when news breaks or someone is trying to use my bank account.
The author stated that many organizations offer educational
e-newsletters (Maloy, Verock-
O’Loughlin, Edward, 2013, pp. 136). Out of curiosity, I
typed in education e-newsletter. I
found
more than enough websites. One that caught my eye was
https://www.edutopia.org/edutopia/enews.
I am well aware of edutopia websites; I was not aware
there was a e-newsletter. I signed up for this e-newsletter
because I liked the reviews and I liked
the information that was in the newsletter over the other
websites I looked at.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is
a service that will give subscribers access to the news and other information.
RSS will save a person time because they do not need to visit each individually
site of interest. A person does not need to join individual sites to get the
news they are looking for, therefore, a person can ensure their privacy (Maloy,
Verock-
O’Loughlin, Edward, 2013, pp. 137-138).
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Laughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edward, Sharon
A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming
Learning with New Technologies, 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson
Education, Inc.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rahulrodriguez/9026700946
.
No comments:
Post a Comment