Social Bookmarking

I knew nothing about social bookmarking before this assignment, so I had to read and research a lot to get an idea about what it was, to watch the video ‘social bookmarking in plain English’ helped a lot because is clear, simple and consist. That video shows what you need know about social bookmarking in just couple of minutes.

Now that I know what is social bookmarking for, I can tell the great value this has, not just for sharing your favorite web page addresses with other, but it is also very important as a place to store your bookmarks online.  Social bookmarking is a very useful tool when you have to work in other computer that is not yours. Before knowing about social bookmarking I used to send my web addresses to my e-mail, but that is extremely uncomfortable. You can also keep saved your information in case of lose your data base. Last year my laptop stopped working and I had to buy a new one, so I lost all my bookmarks.  But now I know the way to keep them safe.

I think that social bookmarking can be used for the teachers to share interesting information with students, pages with content related to the assignments or important articles for students’ learning or just to socialize sharing common interests. On the other hand I think that this tool is not very appropriate for K-12 students because their level of interest when investigating and being autonomous is not the same as the more mature students.

Here is my Delicious: https://delicious.com/ilainnafulgenci

Trends & Issues Instructional Design and Technology:

            I did not know they were struggling so hard to have a definition of our field, and I didn’t know we have so many different definitions, so it was a surprise to find out this. My biggest surprise was the discovery that the field of educational technology is also called Instructional Design and Technology, it was a surprise because I realized that I like that term more than the term we use now, because it imply the word: design and I believe that the EDT have a lot to do with the design.

            It was a bit shocking to realize that the book's authors are right when they say that many professionals in the area of educational technology are not able to clearly describe their field to others. And it was more shocking to realize that I'm also struggling to have a clear definition. For me the EDT field is related with media, technology devices and computers, but the field is so much more than that. As the authors say ‘the field of instructional design and technology (also known as instructional technology) compares the analysis of learning and performance problems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation and management of instructional and non-instructional processes… (p.5). I agreed with their definition because involved more than just tech and describes very good our field, I also like the term IDT more than EDT.

The Wikis

Few days ago I thought the only Wiki that existed was Wikipedia. I was completely unaware of everything about wikis, apart from Wikipedia, that is why this assignment was a complete challenge for me, and I liked it. I was so exited creating my wiki, searching for information and discovering the different applications of this useful web 2.0, a first I thought that it was very similar to Google doc, but then I realized that it’s very different. The wikis have so many applications in different fields like education and labor; wikis are collaborative tools that allow you share your work with others people and allow them to collaborate with you. It was fun creating my Wiki page once I figured out how to handle it.

Wiki in the School:

As an educational tool wikis are very useful, we saw an example of that in the video ‘Using PBWorks Wikis in the Classroom’  we could see how a  teacher uses wikis to assign tasks to students, motivate them to collaborate and participate. Some of the functions that the different actors of education can realize using wikis are:

Teachers	Learners	School
Schedules, resources, research, content, links, consultations, courses.	Portfolio, research, links, summaries, notes, individual texts, collaborative texts, opinions, knowledge sharing, consultation.	Departments, magazines, resources, curricula.

An idea for an activity we might do with learners that would involve the use of a wiki can be:  create a collaborative text, where they compose a poem for the literature class. This assignment is designed for a group of about fifteen students and each one must collaborate with ideas. They should write at least 400 words, these tasks Promotes the group collaboration.

Wiki in my life:

           

The video ‘Wikis in Plain English’ showed us an interesting and very simple way for using wikis. A simple thing like creating a list is something that you can do in a wiki. But the interesting part is that you can create that list in collaboration with your friends far away or people all over the world.

Wiki in the work:

           

You can use wikis at work to:

- To collectively create a ‘welcome kit’.

-Write rules.

- Share information on company products.

- Collaborative space to assess new products.

- Meeting Agenda.

- Customer Service.

You should go and see my Wiki HERE.

My First Experience with RSS and Blogging (The Cone of Dale and the Imagination of Siegel)

I must say that my impression of using a blog has been very good, after I figure out how to create a blog I found myself enjoying the whole process of the design. Actually I’m a fan of blogs, but I haven’t had the interest on creating one, till now.

Now that I have my own blog I want to improve the design and add all kinds of attractive apps like put the links of my RSS feeds, but I have not find out how to do that yet. To create the RSS was really easy, I did not have any experience or expectation with that before, but now I've noticed the utility of this application; I can easy track all the updates of my favorite blogs without opening one by one.

The parts of Dale’s Cone that I think lends themselves best to the tools we have used so far in this class are; well the truth is that was undecided between: Visual symbol, Verbal Symbols and recordings, radio, still pictures.

What parts fit better and why? That was a period of time we did not have all the technology advances that we have today, so the difference is heaven to earth. I chose Visual symbols because as the author say in this division of the cone, we are not longer involved with the realistic reproduction of physical things. In the creation of our blogs physical things were not involved, but we had a learning experience, we also had to use verbal symbols to upload information to the blog. The different is that with the new technologies advance that we have now, we can combine visual and verbal symbols with motion picture, recordings, radio and still pictures. The RSS tools is more a verbal symbol with this you can tell easily which sites have made an updates in its content, but it’s also a visual symbol, you can notice the updates without reading, just by looking  the colors or numbers that symbolize any change.

I think there are many imaginative educational uses for a blog. The idea that you can become a journalist and document all your assignments like a professional is very attractive for, me as student and as a teacher. In a blog you not just post something and that's it, actually you have the feeling that you can publish something really important and make a change in the world or at least make your voice heard. With a blog, students can share their ideas and they can look into their classmate blogs and in that way they can have a much more wide perspective of the assignments.

It’s funny that you have mentioned Postman’s question, because I enjoyed so much his interrogations.  What is the problem to which RSS is an answer? Well I would not say it's a problem to solve, but it is an advantage to use this tool to keep students updated with assignments in an easy and faster way.