Module 8

Lee LeFever - this guy is great...I love everything in "Plain English" - and it's no different this time round as I explore RSS feeds and Google Reader.

A Rich Site Summary, wonderful for easily staying informed about the updated content in the sites I'm interested in. Sounds good, so I set up a RSS feed on Google Reader - I see all those orange icon thingo's with the white arches that remind me of visual sound all the time, so I figure this will be easy - I begin embedding all my favourite sites - hmmm "no feeds detected" "no feeds detected" "no feeds detected" - ahhhh none of the sites I regularly visit have the little orange icon thingo. Need to find me some of those.

Done...however I'm not keen on the whole subscribing idea. I actually find myself getting extremely annoyed when I get sent an email, with some sort of newsletter from a website that I possibly, accidently visited once, and then need to unsubscribe by trying to find a tiny little link at the bottom of the page which then requires me to send a return email.

So I find myself asking, why would I want a whole website dedicated to annoying web feeds?

But then I think more like a 21st century learner and realise, that it's actually a great tool for saving time because I don't need to visit each site individually. I can also now see that my privacy is ensured by not being obligated to join each site's email newsletter.

So I would definitely use this in an educational context for the above reasons, but as for all my other favourite sites...

I love how my Mac homepage directly comes up with twelve of my most recently visited web pages, along with a folded down little star

to indicate any new information.

Module 7

Sharing bookmarks with others - great idea!
Why it's referred to as Delicious - no idea!

"Adding sites to Favourites" "Bookmarking"...all are words familiar to me. However, I never really used them.

Instead of saving the places which I visited most, I simply began typing the first couple of letters of a site and the drop down menu would give me an abundance of options. Simple.
But what about when I used a friend's computer or a public one? The most visited sites on those machines, were not always my most visited site - so search engines were the next step to finding a place I couldn't remember off the top of my head.

So although I could see the benefit of saving sites as a "Bookmark" or "Favourite", to me, my way, was just as easy.

But then, once again, I am introduced to a way in which I can share all of the great information I might find and "tag" it too!

Now I'm sure not every one would be interested in the sites I visit most - So You Think You Can Dance; Cirque Du Solei; Sydney Trapeze School;

But, as many of my colleagues have already noted, I'm sure there would be people interested in many of the sites I find that make teaching that little bit easier, or those resources that little bit quicker...
http://www.sparklebox.co.uk

http://www.abcteach.com

or visit my Delicious Account
http://delicious.com/lauramjkerr

So in conclusion, the building of online communities, and creating and sharing not only information, but one's learning, is DELICIOUS...mmmmm - I can only imagine how many people have used this play on words - oh teachers, we're definitely one of a kind!