Saturday, January 26, 2008

Finding my voice on Twitter

I've been on Twitter for a couple of weeks now, and I am pleased to see that my network is growing--a big thank you to Sue Waters for asking the folks in her network to follow me! I've been enjoying reading the tweets and finding out quickly what people are up to and followingGag the links they provide. My challenge right now is finding my voice. So far I feel like I've been lurking. I feel like I need to have something really important say, which is silly since there's some pretty everyday things that people comment on. Perhaps it is just that I don't know the people in my network very well yet, but I know that will change :-)

Image: gag by G. Rohs

Friday, January 18, 2008

I'm on Twitter

After my last post I got a bit of ribbing from Sue Waters, and encouragement from Sarah Stewart re: Twitter. Sue, a confessed Twitter addict, thought it was funny that Sarah and I were scared of Twitter. Not ones to be laughed at, Sarah and I decided to take the plunge together. Feel free to check out Sarah and my Twitter profiles.Free Bird

So, after a few days of Twittering, I have to say I can really see the power of the site. Post a question, and within a very short time someone's gotten back to you with some good information. You read a great new blog post, Twitter it, and now your 'followers' are onto it too. Cool! It is not as intensive as I thought it would be, mind you I have a teensy network. You really can just be a fly on the wall and participate when and if you fell like it.

My challenge right now is to build up my network. If you (or someone you know) are new to Twitter and trying to build up a network, let's reciprocate--you follow me and I'll follow you ;-)

Image: Free Bird by Southern Pixel

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Tools and Sites I Use List

Following Will Richardson's lead (and therefore TechCrunch's) I thought I would make a list of the Tools and Sites I currently use on a regular basis. Like Will, I'm just going to include those I use at least once a week, and I'll star the ones I use on a daily basis.

  • Google Search* (just discovered the 'define' feature--it's wonderful. In your search type "define:"and then a word and you'll get definitions from multiple websites)

  • Google Video* (less porn/questionable material than YouTube)

  • Google Notebook*

  • Google Calendar*

  • Edublogs*

  • Moodle*

  • Firefox* (I just love the tabs and that it is open source and not a Microsoft product :-p It blows Safari out of the water too.)

  • YouTube*

  • Google Reader*

  • Elluminate Live! (I teach in a DL program, so I end up tutoring over the phone quite a bit. Now, if a student has a math problem we usually just go into Elluminate and use the whiteboard--it's great. Better yet, it is available to all public school teachers in BC through a provincial license.)

  • Wikipedia

  • iGoogle* (I have Gsearch, Gmail, Gcalender, Greader, plus news and weather all in one handy place)

  • WebCT/Blackboard


List

It will be interesting to see how much this list changes in a year from now. Nine of the items on my list I was not using at all as of five months ago. Five of the items are from Google. Forgot YouTube, that's six. I sure hope that Google uses its awesome power for good and not evil, as they sure must know a lot about me!

Now here's my list of tools/sites that I would either like to start using or use more frequently. The ones I haven't tried sound really good, but I just haven't found the time to check them out. OK, I'll admit it; I'm actually scared of trying Twitter.

  • Twitter (not sure I get it, worried that it will suck me into the abyss)

  • Ustream (all this time I thought folks were talking about 'United Streaming' which I have found to be pretty ho-hum. Ustream--whole different thing.)

  • Del.icio.us

  • Flickr (I have an account, just haven't put the time into seeing how to make optimal use of it.)


Site that went from 'Cool' to 'Ho-Hum'; Facebook. When I first signed up it lived up to its 'Crackbook' nick name. But now I hardly ever check it out. Maybe I'm too old for Facebook?

Any tools/site you couldn't live without? I'd love to hear about them!

*List photo by nocos