Adventures in Teaching and Learning

Most of my daily CPD these days (and yes, it is almost daily) comes from Twitter. This morning, via a link to a blog, I found a link to a slideshare presentation, which I found so interesting that I thought I’d share it here.

Thanks to Rod Lucier, also known as the Clever Sheep, for this presentation. As well as the obviously useful information about collaboration, and the examples of site and applications that can support working together in education, I think this is about the first time I’ve sat and watched a slideshare presentation while listening to the voiceover. As I have an ICT in RE presentation to prepare, I think I ought to have a go at doing that as well, if I have time!!

I also thought I’d add a link to the Web 2.0 Tools site mentioned by Rod in his presentation.

I feel that since I have been blogging so little recently, and using Twitter so much, I should share some of the interesting links that I have discovered, and some of the interesting twitterers that I follow. (If I mention you, and you wish me to remove you, please let me know via the comment box – or DM me on Twitter!)

Twitterholic – According to their website, Twitterholic “robots scan the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database.” You can look up your own stats to see what your ranking is; however, it is also useful to see who the most popular Twitterers are (Barack Obama followed by Stephen Fry, as of Friday 13 February 2009). Jonathan Ross joined only 75 days ago, and he is already at number 12.

Mr Tweet is my next recommendation. When you follow him, he will suggest people that you might like to follow, including people who are particularly relevant to you, based on what you twitter about. I found loads of interesting technological educators … which brings me to my next site.

TwitterSheep is like Wordle for Twitter. If you enter your username, TwitterSheep will look at the bios of your followers and come up with a word cloud. You can see mine (well, my most recent one) on TwitPic here. Alternatively you can search among your own tweets to see what you tweet about. Mine was too big to take a screenshot …

TwitPic could do with some more explaining. Well, not much explaining. You can upload photos or send them from your mobile, and these will be added as a link to your twitter feed.

I’ve just uploaded TweetDeck to my computer. So it’s maybe not the best time to give any sort of opinion! But it gets good write ups elsewhere, and Phillip Schofield uses it. Along with loads of other people. You can see everyone’s tweets, but you can also make groups; I can therefore follow my personal friends, helpful educational twitterers, people who tweet about Malawi and celebrities, as well as getting my BBC updates etc.

Twitter_Tips is an interesting general twitterer to follow: this application (?) posts links to interesting general Twitter news.

I’ve mentioned Terry Freedman a number of times now on my blog. I often get links to interesting articles via him. I recently came across Alvin Trusty (via his excellent blog post on how to create a great powerpoint). Another twitterer worth following is Tom Barrett, particularly for links to such excellent presentations such us Nineteen (and counting) Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom.

Hmmm. There are so many more. I am following just over 100 people, many of them top class “edtech” folk, who obviously live interesting lives and also provide me with links to fascinating posts and news about new technology in education. I had hoped to add some links to a few of the interesting recent news and posts about Twitter that I have read in the last couple of days, but it is Saturday the Fourteenth now, rather than Friday the Thirteenth, and I have to get some sleep! I hope there has been something of interest to you in this post. Which will be twittered on my Twitter feed at some point in the near future …

ADDED LATER:
50 ideas on using Twitter in education – thanks to Carol Cooper-Taylor, whose blog I found via Twitter_Tips.

A directory of Learning Professionals (and others) on Twitter – digital breadcrumbs meant I went from Carol’s blog to Jane Hart’s blog, to her Twitter page, to her other blog, to here! I also found Twitlet through her. Many thanks, Jane!

Some of you may wish to join and add to the Twitter for Teachers wiki.

I’ve just found Clif’s Notes … on Twitter in Education. There are plenty of links there that you could follow to find out more. Clif’s Notes linked to Tom Barrett’s post on using Twitter in the classroom, in a Maths lesson on probability. Nice one!

An ice cream analogy to explain social media. With thanks to Ant Jessop, who left a comment at Ben Annett’s blog … it’s those digital breadcrumbs again!

It’s always nice to stumble accidentally over educational blogs. Read Susan Sedro’s post with tips for starting new technologies for a few good ideas and some encouragement when piloting new ideas with your classes. In turn, her post directed me to Kim Cofino’s blog, another blog charting Kim’s progress with using new technologies with her classes. She also has a long selection of blogs on her links. I’m slowly making my way through them, trying to visit and see what I can learn! I liked the idea of “digital breadcrumbs” mentioned in this post on the blog, Random Ramblings. This is the idea that all these links are like breadcrumbs that we should follow to see where they lead.