Finale!

Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?
Wow! Congratulations! You are superstars! You've reached the 23rd thing. Give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program! We hope you have enjoyed the process and learned some things. But before we send you off into the brave new world of Web 2.0, there is one last discovery post.

For your last and final exercise for this program, please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you're drawing a blank:

• What were your favorite Things (like in the Sound of Music) and discoveries?
• What did you find especially useful?
• What would you like to know more about?
  
• How did you connect with others doing the 23 Things?
• How has this program assissted or affected your lifelong learning and/or your classroom?
  
• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or content?
  
• What do you love so much that you would like to help at an idea session for fellow staff members?
  
• How would you describe your learning experience in one word or in one sentence, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities to others?

And last, but not least…

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?

After all the time and effort you have invested in 23 Things, we hope you will continue to experiment with new tools and continue to blog about your learning and the challenges of Web2.0. Here are some ideas:

• Maintain your blog as you continue to learn and play with new Web 2.0 tools.
  
• Add your blog URL to your e-mail signature line.
• Re-purpose your blog as your education blog.
  
• Share your blog with your colleagues and administrators.
  
• Start your own 23 Things with colleagues, friends, family. The concept is adaptable to any content--23 Books, 23 Movies, 23 Football Games, 23 Anything You Can Think Of. It is a great way to create and strengthen community through learning and discussion.
  

Be sure to let us know how you plan to continue.Thanks for participating and being so willing to share! Thank you all for participating in this journey. It has been fantastic and we hope that the journey simply continues on from here.

K12 Online Conference!

Not a "Thing"... but something pretty cool.

In the spirit of learning about technology:

Hop on over to the K-12 Online Conference!

Today is Day One. Enjoy!

Thing 22: YouTube

By now, the world knows YouTube(started by a Saint Paul Central High School grad!) as the source of all things video on the Internet. And we do mean “all things.” The good, the bad, and the ugly are all there for all to see—one reason many districts block YouTube. Another reason is bandwidth. Like music, video is a bandwidth hog. We recommend you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

YouTube revolutionized the way video is shared on the Internet by making it easy to upload and share videos. Other video sites have popped up, including Google Video. YouTube is now owned by Google, so it will be interesting to see the how the evolution/merging of the two sites happens. Right now, a search of either one returns results from both sites.

There are dozens of other video sites, but among the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials or 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing aboutbloopers here. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube or Google Video find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
   
2. Talk with your students. Ask them if they have videos online that they have created (probably for classes) and check them out! You might be surprised at their talent!
   
3. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site?why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any ways to use video on your web site or in your class?

OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Other popular video hosting sites:

Yahoo Videos
Google videos
Others - top video site list
NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.

Challenge

1. Feeling brave? Make your own video and upload it to YouTube or Google Video. Promote a program or introduce your library to the community or something else. If you do, be sure to embed it in your blog. We all want to see it!

2. Jumpcut is a Yahoo! product that lets you upload video or photos, re-mix and edit them, and produce a video. It is all online, easy to use, and with many other features, including slide shows and clips to add to yours as you build your movie. And, like most Web 2.0 tools, it offers a community of like-minded participants who want to watch your videos and share theirs with you. So jump right in and make a video to share with us. Post it to your blog and let us know just how easy it is to be creative!

Other Resources

Do you need a way to SAVE those YouTube videos so that you can use them in class without having to worry about an internet connection? Try any of these sites:

vixy.net

flvto.com

vconversion

zamzar

Viral videos are what our students are watching. It's an easy way to relate.

Thing 21: Podcasting 101

What? You want to learn how to be a podcaster too? In this Thing we will be looking at the "how" of podcasting… trying to keep it as simple as this web 2.0 primer allows. There are myriad resources available for people "serious" about podcasting.

• Poducate me
• Yahoo: Publish a podcast
• Odeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
• Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
• How to podcast tutorial
• The Beginner's Guide to Podcast Creation (from iLounge)

If you want to go about it the "real" way, you'll need to equip yourself with some things. Mostly, you'll need a microphone and the freeware program Audacity (for sound recording). You will ultimately need those things, but peruse the aforementioned resources to learn more first.

We are just trying things out with these 23 things… getting that "taste" for the web 2.0 tools, so we'll keep it easy. (Although podcasting itself isn't difficult either.) So, here are some resources for recording sound online (or through your cell phone). Click through them to see which one calls out to you, and then prepare for some sound-magic!

Discovery Resources

Earfl

Gabcast

Gcast

Cinch

VoiceThread

Discovery Exercise

1. Create an account (if needed) at the site that called your name.
2. Add an audio post about your experience to your blog.
• You did it! You created a sound file that could be the beginning of a podcasting paradigm for you! What did you think? Was it easy? Was it hard? Could your students do it? For what purpose? Where do you want to go from here?
• Did you notice that you could have used your Jott account to create saved audio as well? I'm glad that you tried new things, though!

Challenge (optional)

1. Check out the poducateme guide; reading specifically the second paragraph about the studies done at Duke University about the use of podcasts in classrooms.
2. Keep up with your audio goodness. Make it a "real" podcast by continuing it on a regular basis. Maybe add it as a permanent guest on your blog!
1. 

Thing 20: Podcasting

Podcasts, Smodcasts!

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Google Reader account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

• To find out more about podcasts start with Yahoo: What is a podcast tutorial?
  
• There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Here are a few of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, don't require a software download:

1. Podcast.com
2. Podcastalley.com
3. Podcast Directory
   
4. Educational Podcast Directory

• iTunes recently added iTunes U. College and university faculty post content they create for their classes. Students and others can download what they need, and go. Download iTunes (free) here for either Mac or Windows.

Discovery Exercise

1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed (or iTunes, if you have it) and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting education related podcasts here.
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Google Reader
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful?

Thing 19: Jott

When you feel you just haven't gotten enough nagging (and perhaps need more), you can nag yourself with electronics. Okay, so maybe that casts a bad light on this Thing… so let's try again. Here's a story (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) to illustrate the reason for this Thing:

Jane is a teacher. Every night she stays up working on school work: planning, correcting, reflecting. Every morning she is up early so she can get to school with time to breathe.

On this very ordinary Tuesday morning, Jane gets up, showers, puts on her clothes (ugh, forgot to iron again), eats breakfast (remembering that they are almost out of milk and eggs) , brushes her teeth (oops, she needs to schedule that dentist appointment), puts on her makeup (almost out of mascara), picks up her school bag and is ready to walk out the door for her glorious day of work when Steve, her husband, trods slowly out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes. "Hey, remember that we have that thing tonight… oh, and the baby needs diapers at home and more wipes at daycare." It's a good thing that they've been married long enough that Jane knows exactly what "thing" Steve is talking about. She smiles, gives him a kiss and leaves for the day.

In the car on the way to work, Jane goes over her mental list. "Grocery store: milk, eggs, mascara?. Once I get to work: call dentist. Target: diapers and wipes… wait, can I get that at the grocery store? Hmmm… there was one more thing… what was that?"

As she simmers about what that last thing is, she pulls into school and walks up to her room. She has two students waiting (they actually came to school early!) for help with class. She starts to pull out worksheets and think about what steps she should take for each student for maximal understanding.

And what has happened to that mental list? By the time 3:00 hits, she's at 50% (at best)… and that's with the understanding that nothing else has been added to that list during her day (which is improbable).

The problem for Jane (and many of us) is that she is pretty sure she will remember… and that she doesn't have access to anything to write on when she gets (or thinks about) the information.

Jott, and programs like it, close this information gap. With Jott, you call in (on your cell/home/school phone) and leave a message (like "Remember the Milk!"). Jott then transcribes the information and sends you a text reminder for the time you set up.

Discovery Exercise

1. Go to Jott and create an account.
2. Call and send yourself a message/reminder.
3. Blog about your experience and the possible applications in education or for yourself.

Discovery Resources

Jott

Remember the Milk

Evernote

Challenge

1. Use Jott to post to your blog. (Now only possible by subscribing to the Jott service. It might be worth it!)
2. Sign up for Remember the Milk and Jott or e-mail to your Remember the Milk account. It separates your task by due dates and will e-mail you reminders. You can also sync this with your iGoogle page (which you automatically have b/c you have a Google ID). See Vicki Davis's Post on Rocking your Remember the Milk.
3. Use one or more of the discovery resources listed above and sync them with Google Calendar. Blog about your experience. (this one could be a Thing on its own…)

Thing 18: Survey Goodness

If you chose the cell phone adventure last week, you might have found that even cell phones can be used for surveys… but in this Thing we will be discovering some of the "survey services" (that's fun to say) that are available for free online.

Polls and Surveys can be used for polling 100 people (like on "Family Feud"), making money (Surveysavvy), giving some statistics to things like elections (Gallup polls), and educational feedback (end-of-class surveys, to name one). What do all of these have in common? They are set up because they want feedback. What they do with that feedback (or how they interpret the feedback) changes as often as the wind (Are we, or are we not, in a recession?)… but the first step is always to get the feedback.

So this is our Thing for today. You get to discover the inner-workings of the various survey sites and really get a taste and feel for how they work. The fantastic part is that these sites (for the most part) do most of the data collecting and crunching for you. So you set up your survey and get immediate results… fully tailored with statistical analysis.

Here are the sites we'll be working with:

• Survey Gizmo
• Survey Monkey
• Zoomerang
• KeySurvey
• Poll Daddy

Discovery Exercise

1. Check out (trial run or tour) at least two of the survey sites. See what they have to offer.
2. Choose a site and create an account and
3. Create (and use) a survey! Create the survey, have people take it, and take a look at the sleek results you get.
4. Blog about the experience: what you liked and didn't like. What you hoped for and how you can use this personally/professionally.

*Hint: Surveys are also named "Choice" in Moodle if you're using it!

Thing 17: Googledocs

Many people use email and attached documents to share various versions of a project. This may work, but there are several obstacles to smooth exchange and editing. Attachments may not open or you or your collaborators may not have the same software program or the right version to open and edit a document. It is easy to lose track of which is the current version with all the changes.

Web 2.0 tools make collaborating on creating a document or other publication easier. Documents are online and available from any computer with Internet access. Edits are easy to make and save. The program saves a document’s history with all changes made and indicates who made the changes. A full set of word processing tools makes formatting simple. Click the toolbar buttons to bold, underline, indent, change font or number format, change cell background color and so on.

Get the idea from Googledocs in Plain English (our favorite videos for learning!).

In this Thing, edit a famous document using these two collaboration tools. Both are free. You don’t need an account to edit these public documents. To create and share documents, you must sign up for an account.

Use Google Docs to create basic word processing documents, presentations, or spreadsheets from scratch or you can upload your existing files. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. You can share documents with a select group or make the document public.

Discovery Exercise

1. Watch Googledocs in Plain English (our favorite videos for learning!).
2. Look at this public document in Google Docs.
3. Send an email to SWC023@gmail.com and we will invite you as a collaborator.Make as many edits and changes to the documents as you wish, using the various editing tools available.
4. Read some Collaborative Learning classroom applications from techlearning.

Blog Prompts

• Which of these tools is easier for you to use?
• How do the features of each compare? Does one have features that would make you choose it over the other?
• How can I use this for/with our students?
• What would the Founding Fathers think?

Challenge (optional)

1. Sign in to your Google Account.

2. Create and share another type of document using other Google tools—Sheet (spreadsheet), Show (presentation tool), Notebook, or Wiki.

3. Publish the document (Public) and post the link on your blog for others to view and/or edit.

4. Blog about the tools' ease of use, potential in the school, and other thoughts.

Other Resources

Slideshare is self-proclaimed as " the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar."

Thing 16: Project Calculator

The University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator is a tool from the University Libraries for undergraduate students. Students put in dates for the beginning and end dates of an assignment and its subject area and this Web 2.0 tool generates a 12-step research guide and timeline for the project and recommends resources and strategies. The Assignment Calculator is widely used and adapted by academic libraries across the country. It is a great interactive resource for students in any class.
The Research Project Calculator (RPC) is based on the Assignment Calculator and was created to help secondary students plan for and navigate the research process in an ethical manner, using reliable resources. This five step process includes deadlines and (optional) email reminders. The tool also offers hints, worksheets, and guides for various types of projects. The RPC and Assignment Calculator are aimed at schools and universities. Link it on a teen or student page, use the bookmarks to inform students and parents about their existence, and encourage students to use it as part of their research planning.

The Teacher Guide to the Research Project Calculator (RPC) assists teachers in planning, managing, and teaching the often daunting research process by providing them with resources and step-by-step instructions, based on the five-step process outlined in the RPC. The site begins with an "About the RPC" section that provides an overview of the calculator, describes the role of the teacher in detail, and explains the resources included in the tool. There is even a streamlined version called "No Time?" for busy teachers. (Is there any other kind?) Also check out the Resources for Teachers.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Look at the RPC and the Assignment Calculator. Don’t try to cover every aspect of the tools, but rather browse the steps and consider how you could encourage students to use this product.
2. Look at the supporting materials in the Teacher Guide and Resources for Teachers. Are any appropriate for class or can you find other resources to supplement what you do for students?
3. Blog about your experience.

Blog Prompt Ideas
How might the RPC and the Teacher Guide help you help students plan and manage research projects?
Which resources did you find to be especially helpful?

Thing 15: Choose Your Own Adventure (Part 3)

Choose Your Own Adventure: Part Three: Online telephone and/or Cell Phone Serendipity

We are breaths away from MEA week here in Minnesota, so this week is packed FULL of things that are just a lot of fun... but, fear not brave warriors, there is (almost) always a possible link to education and your classroom!

Online Telephony

Cell Phone Serendipity

Enjoy!!

Thing 14: Choose Your Own Adventure (Part 2)

Choose Your Own Adventure: Part Two: Digitial Storytelling and/or Musical Fun

It's almost MEA week in this great state of Minnesota, so this week is packed FULL of things that are just a lot of fun… but, fear not brave warriors, there is (almost) always a possible link to education and your classroom!

So, for Part Two, here's your menu:

Digital Storytelling

Musical Fun

Thing 13: Choose Your Own Adventure! (Part 1)

Choose Your Own Adventure: Part One: Funnies, Pictures and/or Mindmaps

It's almost MEA week in this great state of Minnesota, so in order to combat the "too-many-5-day-weeks-burnout", this week is packed FULL of things that are just a lot of fun… but, fear not brave warriors, there is (almost) always a possible link to education and your classroom!
So make your choice, but choose well!

(Just kidding. If you don't like your choice, switcheroo!)

Funnies (Comics/Cartoons)
Pictures/Images
Mindmaps

Thing 12: Try out Moodle

As we learned in the last "Thing", Moodle is an exciting educational technology that easily lends itself to creating "hybrid" classes (online and in-classroom). We saw and thought about possible applications from a very broad perspective. In this "Thing", we get to dig a little deeper and take a look at some of the specific things that Moodle has to offer.

*A quick note: One of the Challenge items from our last discovery was to get your own Moodle shell set up. If you're interested in Moodle, It might be worth your time to do that now so that, when you learn about the specifics, you can apply them right away and get playing!

On this discovery journey, you are going to get to log into a Moodle demo course and check out some of the things Moodle has to offer and dream about possibilities for you and your students.

Discovery Exercise

1. Go to the Moodle Demo Course (top one) and create an account.
2. Once your account is created, go back to the Moodle Demo Course and enroll in the course (on the left hand side).
3. Check out 3-5 things in the demo course. They walk you through a pretty easy demonstration of each of the things you could use within Moodle. (If you're at a loss, check out Assignments, Quizzes, Choices, Forums, Wikis and Workshops.)
4. Blog about your experience with Moodle! (If you're at a loss, check out the prompt ideas below.)

Discovery Resources

• Getting Started for Teachers
• Moodle Demo Course
• Teaching Do's
• Teaching Don'ts
• Teaching Good Practices (k-12)
• "2 Minute Moodle " videos (tutorials)

Blog Prompts

• What specific things are especially interesting to you in Moodle?
• What applications that we have already learned about do you see in Moodle?
• What ideas do you have for the use of specific Moodle applications in your area?
• If you were to start with just one thing in Moodle, what would you be sure to do?
• What solutions are there for students who do not have internet access at home? (How do we, as educators, bridge that inequality and still utilize Moodle to its potential?)

Challenge (optional)

• E-mail Gary Blok (if you're a member of district 833) and ask him to set you up with a class in Moodle for one of your classes. And then read this: Getting Started for Teachers
• If you already have a Moodle class, try one new thing that you learned about in the Moodle Demo Course.
• Check out the "Teaching Do's" (like "encourage students to learn together") and "Teaching Don'ts" (like "Don't get overwhelmed by Moodle") .

Thing 11: Whatsa Moodle?

Oodles of Moodles. Moodles of Noodles? Noodles of Oodles? Hm. I'm lost. Are we talking about Ramen, here?


Moodle is an open source (read: free) e-learning software. Here's a video from the Moodle people showing "what Moodle is all about". Schools across the world (from elementary to college) are using Moodle. The only thing one would need to run Moodle is a server that can hold the program. Our district (SWC833) has a Moodle server, so we are set to go!

Many of the things that you have already learned about (wikis, blogs) and things you will soon be learning about (online collaboration, surveys, and more) are integrated into Moodle. If you have ever wished for:
○ Online quizzes (scored automatically)
○ Online activities for students to access anywhere via the internet
○ Online notes/PowerPoint presentations for students to access as study resources
○ Forums for shared student thought/discussions
○ "Paperless" assignments (created online or uploaded by each student) with easy integrated grading

Then you might want to check out Moodle. Moodle is a simple, yet truly robust software that is available to increase web 2.0 usage and efficiency. (In the next "Thing" you'll have a chance to try out a Moodle demo course and also set up your own Moodle shell.)

Discovery Exercise
1. Watch the very short (about 2 minutes) video about "What is Moodle".
2. Watch the video about Moodle in the Classroom, featuring middle school teacher, Molly Tipton.
3. Blog about your thoughts about Moodle thus far. (If you're at a loss, check out some blog prompt ideas below.)

Discovery Resources
• One teacher talks about Moodle and the use in education, the use in his classroom and the "ups and downs".
• His example class of Moodle for you to check out.

Blog Prompts
• What do you think the strengths/weaknesses of using "hybrid" (online and classroom) courses are?
• What ideas do you have for the use of Moodle in your area?
• From what you know so far, If you could implement just one thing in Moodle, what would you be sure to do?

Challenge (optional) (these continue in the next "thing" as well)
• E-mail Gary Blok (if you're a member of district 833) and ask him to set you up with a class in Moodle for one of your classes. And then read this: Getting Started for Teachers
• If you already have a Moodle class, try one new thing that Molly Tipton talked about in the "Moodle in the Classroom" video. Or check out the "tips" in Getting Started for Teachers.
• Check out the "Teaching Do's" (like "encourage students to learn together") and "Teaching Don'ts" (like "Don't get overwhelmed by Moodle") .

Thing 10: My Own Wiki

Blogs and wikis can easily be used to set up a web presence for you, your family, and your students. The options are limitless. Take a look at some of the resources and cook up some ideas of how you might use a wiki (with/without/for your students).

Discovery Resources

1. describing the why and how of wikis in education.
2. some links to research on wikis in education
3. a collaborative wiki on using wikis in education
4. a blog post about common struggles teachers have when introducing wikis
5. List of examples of educational wikis:
6. Hints for creating a really positive experience for your students on your wiki
7. What are you going to do with your wiki? Here are a couple ideas
8. A wiki example from Westwood High School:
9. A literature wiki example
10. A math wiki example

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore 3-5 (or more!) of the resources above and let your mind simmer with ideas.
2. Blog about ideas you or others might be able to use for wikis (or add them here, on our wiki)!
3. Create your own wiki for personal, class, or educational use through either wikispaces or pbwiki.
4. Blog about the experience of setting it up as well as what your wiki is (if you don't mind sharing-we'd love to come and visit!) and what you're wiki-ing about!

Thing 9: Practice Wiki

"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole SWC23 wiki that’s for nothing but play!

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the Wikispaces SWC23 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, you should add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the SWC23 Wiki and create a login account for yourself.
2. Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there. It’s easy to do if you follow these simple steps:
   
   Example:
   
   
   • Title of blog.
   • Highlight the Title of Blog
   • Click on the world with the chain link button
   • Click on "external web address" and type (or copy and paste) it in!

OPTIONAL: Add a favorite or two to a few other pages (Favorite books, favorite vacation spot, etc). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for book review or short travel essay and link up to that.

3. Create a post in your blog about the experience. (For ideas if you're stuck, try the blog prompts below.)

Blog Prompts

1. What was easy/hard about working with the wiki?
2. What ideas do you have for how wikis might be used in education?
3. What ideas do you have for wikis and you? (foreshadowing, perhaps??)

* NOTE: The SWC23 Wiki was created using the free version of Wikispaces, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit. PBWiki is another great site for free educational wikis.

Thing 8: Wiki, Wiki, Whack!

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and likely the most well known of these knowledge-sharing tools. Wikis have many benefits, are easy to use, and have many applications.
Some of the benefits of wikis:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools allow you to easily keep up on what has been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be rolled back and viewed when needed.
• Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content.

Schools and educators all over the country have begun to use wikis to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, staff handbook wikis, and best practices wikis. As you can/will see when you view the wikis in the list below, the content of a wiki depends on the knowledge and commitment of participants.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Watch this Common Craft Video on Wikis. It is a great (quick and easy) introduction to wikis. (If you prefer reading to watching, check out the resources section below.)
   
2. Take a look at some wikis. Here are a few examples to get you started (and then find some on your own!):
3. Create a blog post about your findings. (If you're stuck on what to blog about, check out the prompt ideas below.)
   

• Moving Forward A huge list of fantastic educator examples of wikis
• Using Wiki in Education a wiki (about a book) for educators
• Web 2.0 wiki A primer for these fantastic Web 2.0 tools: wiki-style.
• The Chauncy School supplements textbook learning by adding resources, quizzes and notes to their wiki. It’s a great idea to create a new page for each unit and attach classroom handouts making them accessible from anywhere (from pbwiki "Educator examples")
• Professor Nana high school class uses PBwiki to build an online course guide. The syllabus is posted online and students are encouraged to share class notes, post questions, and build on each other’s work. The result is a fully formed analysis of course sections, and a great study guide for the final exam. (from pbwiki "Educator examples")
• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library.

Here are some Minnesota wikis:

• Educational Heritage Project, a wiki from Minnesota Literacy Council
• Minnewiki from Minnesota Public Radio
• Beekeeping in MN wiki
• MN 150 wiki from Minnesota Historical Society

Resources

Use these resources to learn more about wikis:

• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.
• Wikis: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples.
• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation.

Blog Prompts

• What did you find interesting about the wiki concept?
• What types of applications within schools might work well with a wiki?
• Many teachers/faculty "ban" Wikipedia as a source for student research. What do you think of the practice of limiting information by format?

Thing 7: Digg and Stumble

In the "olden days," people would scan the headlines in local and national news sources for the latest in breaking news, government reports, celebrity scandals, or new and cool information in an effort to be knowledgeable. Today we might use RSS to streamline that process... for the sites and sources we already know... but there are thousands of "new" news sources--not only mainstream media online, but Internet-only news/scandal sources, blogs, chats and more--to keep up with. What's a person to do?

One way to see what people are interested in is to check out what's popular on social media sites that allow users to nominate and then “vote” for news and other items they find interesting. There are many of these sites—and everyone from mainstream media (for example, The New York Times, slate.com, and the Washington Post) to blogs and Web sites includes links so readers can recommend content from these sites to other readers. Look for boxes labeled “Share” or “Article Tools” on news sites, blogs, and Web pages to find links for sharing the article. These are examples:


Here are some of the popular sites:
Digg “is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web...You won’t find editors at [Digg]… provide[s] a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.”
StumbleUpon is similar to Digg, but solves that eternal question of "How would I have ever found such a great resource if I hadn't been mindlessly surfing the web for hours?". You can sign up under categories of interest and click "Stumble!" in your toolbar… and it will bring you to sites you would probably think are pretty neat and never otherwise know about. Your own tagging and bookmarking help others find the things they might like as well. Careful: This one is dangerously addictive.
Reddit is a “source for what's new and popular on the web…We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.”
Newsvine lets “you...read stories from established media organizations…as well as individual contributors ... Placement of stories is determined by a multitude of factors including freshness, popularity, and reputation... editorial judgement (sic) is in the hands of the community.”
Mixx “is your link to the web content that really matters. There's a lot of information out there… And who knows better than you what informs you, what makes you think, what makes you laugh? So why should some faceless editor get to decide what's important?”
See a theme here? No editors to decide what information is important, user-generated content, reader recommendations/sharing, and you and others get to vote on what makes the top lists—the very definition of Web 2.0.

And it can affect educators—top stories/recommendations will drive questions from students and colleagues. Love it or hate, it pays to be in the know.

In this Thing, learn more about the five social media sites mentioned. Then read an article and recommend it to others via the site you choose to use.

Discovery Exercise
1. Explore the sites above to see how each is organized and operates.
Mixx Home Page
Mixx Tour
Digg Home Page
Digg Tour
StumbleUpon Home Page
StumbleUpon Tour
Newsvine Home Page
Newsvine Welcome
Reddit Home Page
Reddit Intro
2. Read one or more stories on a news/information site (for example, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, or another site) and then recommend it via the Share tools.
3. Blog about your thoughts! (If you're at a loss for blogging ideas, see the prompt ideas below)

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Del.ic.ious offer this sort of news/site recommendation, too.

Blog Prompts
How do you think you can use these tools in your classroom or at home?
Do these tools seem to be a productivity enhancer or a productivity detractor?
Have you ever read a story/item as a result of seeing it on one of these sites?

Challenge (optional)
Dig deeper into these social media sites by creating an account in one or more of them. Each site offers suites of tools that allow you to comment, chat, create your own news column, and more. Having an account lets you be a participatory member of that community.
1. Create the account(s) and explore the tools.
2. Blog about the various tools and any uses you see for your school or classroom. Let us know what you do!

Thing 6: Social Bookmarking

Tagging & social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e.Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

This week, we want to take a look at a popular social bookmarking site called Del.icio.us (typed in as http://del.icio.us/).

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Many users find that the real power of Del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user's filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool, each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

Discovery Resources:
Common Craft Video on social tagging
Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (8 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us

Discovery Exercise:

1. View the Common Craft Video to get an idea of its features. (Or read Delicious in Education or Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us)
   
   
2. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the SWC23 account that was created for this exercise. Note: In this account you will find lots of resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Learning 2.0 program.


3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?


4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for education and lifelong learning? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge (see below), create a Del.icio.us account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Del.icio.us’ latest addition, a network badge. (Psst! see it over there at the end of the navigation sidebar)

Note: If you do setup a Del.icio.us account, here’s a quick word about the Del.icio.us Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Del.icio.us” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Del.icio.us” link to view your online account.

Challenges (optional)

1. Watch the 8 minute delicious tutorial from the Otter group and set up your own account!


2. Explore Furl, another social bookmarking site that lets you organize your bookmarks. Compare its features with Del.icio.us.


3. Pagekeeper is a similar service aimed at teachers--it is an ad-free site that lets you create a list of Web sites for student access. Try the bookmarking features of Pagekeeper and compare them to del.icio.us and/or Furl. Pagekeeper is maintained by Teaching Matters, a non-profit that promotes technology integration in education.
   

Thing 5: Educate yourself

Add at least three other news feeds, blogs, or Web page updates to your account. There are several ways you can locate RSS feeds:

When visiting your favorite websites, look for the RSS indicator. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation of the site. The orange square above is one type of RSS feed icon. Here are some other RSS feed icons.

Do a blog search in Google. This search limits results only to blog postings. This can lead you to bloggers talking about what you are interested in.

Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts
Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in. Additonal Resource: Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog

Find some education or technology blogs, headlines, or other resources. Share those you find useful via a blog post.

Some places to start: edubloggers and interesting rss feeds dealing with education:
*Kathy Schrock's List of Education/Technology Bloggers
*Support Blogging
*Top 100 Education blogs (OEDb)
*CNN's education RSS feed
*Classroom 2.0
*Infinite Thinking
*The Edublog Awards
*International Edublogger directory

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate some news feeds.
   
2. Add at least three other news feeds, blogs or Web Page updates to your account (aside from the feeds from the other participants). Be sure to also add the feed for this project! (There won't be any more reminder e-mails to the entire staff, so this is the best way to keep up!)
   
3. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about ...

• What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
  
• How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?
  
• How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
  
• Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?
  
• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
  
• Did you find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader?

Challenge (optional):

1. Make it public! Add your blogroll (the list of sites you subscribe to via RSS) on your blog! On blogger, it's easy through the layout tab… and then adding a page element!


2. If you've been doing this for a while, check out Todd's blog about Google Reader... and then try out the "stars and notes" for yourself!

Are you bummed that there are only two Things this week? Keep learning and check out some of the challenges from the past few Things! (Sitemeter is a fun way to keep track of who is visiting your site!)

Thing 4: Life Really Simple

Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader
Thanks to all of you brave and inquisitive souls who are participating in this adventure... I hope you're having fun already! There are so many more fun things to come!

So everyone participating in 23 Things now has a blog and we told you to read your fellow learners’ blogs. Are you thinking, “Wait, I have to click on 100+ bookmarks to see if anyone has updated?!? Forget it; waaaay too much time.”

But what if you could visit all those blogs and more information sources in just one place and all at the same time? Would that be valuable to you? Well, you can! A lot smart people out there who like to keep up-to-date and save time have created services to make it easy to follow your favorite blogs and other information sources. It’s called RSS.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web.

In the information world, RSS has changed the way news, media, and content creators share information, and it is changing the way everyday users are consuming information. Join the revolution by setting up a RSS account.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Watch this Common Craft video about RSS and/or read more .
2. Set up an aggregator account using Google Reader. It’s free. Follow the directions at Google Reader (since you should already have a Google account for your blog) or the step-by-step directions for a Google Reader.
3. You will want to add some of your fellow participants’ blogs to your Google Reader account. This will help you keep up-to-date on they have to say about the Things, their discoveries, and comments. You can add additional feeds for Web sites, news sites, podcasts, and more, too.
4. Blog about this experience on your blog! Don't know what to blog about? Here are some questions to ponder...

• What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?


• How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?


• How can teachers or media specialists use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?


• Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?


• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?


• Did you find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader?

Resources
These resources will give you more information on the hows and whys of RSS.
Feed Me: A gentle introduction to Internet feeds - a good tutorial from Palinet,
Will Richardson shares an excellent eleven page guide to RSS for educators.

Challenge (optional)
If you already have a Google reader account, try out Bloglines, Netvibes or any of the other RSS services and blog about your thoughts about each.

Have fun finding and reading blogs (next thing!). But beware; it can be addictive!