Two Web 2.0 presentations

Recently Donna DesRoches, a Learning Resources Consultant from the Living Sky School Division in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada shared two of her presentations with the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). Donna has agreed to share her presentations with us here at SLAV’s Bright Ideas as well.

Selection 2.0: Using RSS to enhance print, multimedia and web-based resource selection

(Description) RSS, a web-based application that allows the training of information to come to us, can be used to carry-out the professional selection responsibilities of teacher-librarians. This workshop will explain RSS, demonstrate a variety of formats for organizing incoming information and provide a number of sources for print, multimedia and web-based resources.

http://www.netvibes.com/donnadesroches#General

In this session I showed teacher-librarians how to use delicious feeds to create updated lists of resources for teachers and students. I suggested using NetVibes and using the private pages as the ‘messy’ pages where the feeds from things such as book blogs, and other tools with RSS feeds e.g. CM, Open Culture, Librarians’ Internet Index and Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day – much like the pile of selection tools that ends up on our desks.

As teachers find sites that meet the learning needs of their staff and students they add them to their delicious account tagging them appropriately. The feeds for the specific delicious tags are added to their NetVibes public pages resulting in a collection that could look like this….

Using Emerging Technologies to Build a Personal Learning Network

(Description) Teacher-librarians are specialists with unique learning needs that are not always met through school or division-based professional development. This workshop will provide teacher-librarians with the tools and the knowledge to create networks that will lessen the isolation and provide global connections that will enhance their own learning and benefit the teachers and students with whom they work.

My slide show and supporting links can be found at http://teacherlibrarian20.wikispaces.com/pln

If you have questions about the presentations – please contact Donna.

Thanks to Donna for sharing her presentations with us here in Australia.

Siosus

Siosus is a free total online sharing and collaboration workspace.  The free basic package includes unlimited workspaces and unlimited number of members.  

Siosus homepage

Siosus homepage

Tools that are included in the free basic package are useful and extensive:

  • Contacts and group manager
  • Custom workspace
  • Manage your files
  • Calendars and events
  • Blogs
  • Discussions
  • Chat and IM
  • RSS feeds
  • Web database management
  • Project management
  • Task automation
  • Permissioning 
What's included?

What's included

The drawbacks are that there are limits to the free package:

  • Only 25MB free storage
  • Advertising appears on your homepage
  • Only 200 MB monthly transfer
  • 10Mb file size upload limit

 There are three upgrades that increase all of the storage/transfer/upload options and give better support; however they cost from US$15 to US$100 per month.

Upgrade options

Upgrade options

Siosus does appear to be just about the total package when it comes to sharing and collaborating with colleagues who are sitting next to you or on the other side of the world. However, limits will affect the efficacy of the free package. It all depends on how much space you actually need to use.  

Siosus is the platform chosen by James Henri and Sandra Lee to run the Your School Library online conference.

Furl – social bookmarking tool

If you like del.icio.us, then you’ll also like Furl. It is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save and archive webpages, rather than just the URL. So if a webpage has changed, you still have access to the version you saved. You can also carry out full text searches of your bookmarks via your archive; you don’t need to click into the webpage that you had previously saved.

Furl page

Furl page

If you use Firefox as a search engine, you are able to add a Furl icon to your Firefox toolbar. Once you have logged into Furl in the morning, any webpage that you come across during the day can be quickly saved to Furl by clicking the Furl icon and adding a few details. It’s that easy!

Instructions to add Furl to your Firefox toolbar:

  • 1. After installing the extension, go to the [View] menu and select [Toolbars].
  • 2. Choose [Customize…].
  • 3. Scroll down until you see the two Furl buttons, drag them to your toolbar,
  • 4. Click the [Done] button.
  • 5. You’re now ready to start Furling

Furl calls tags ‘topics’. You can also add comments, rate the website using a star rating and add your own keywords for easy searching.

You can also subscribe to RSS feeds, such as the Bright ideas one, so you don’t have to check back to see when a post has been added.