New Tools

Well, getting started was okay.

• E-mail account

Yahoo account, check. It was a great idea to use anonymous (fake) information (name, birth date, etc.). I think it will help students feel a little safer online. For tips on online account safety, click here.

• Bookmark Page

What is a social bookmarking site?  Find out here.  What a fabulous idea is this? All of your bookmarks with you wherever you are. There are so many different ones to choose from, but why not use one that sounds yummy? So...
Delicious account, check. Adding bookmarks to said account, proving difficult. It is super easy to use but my question is:  What to put on? When I go online, I have to admit it is Facebook, People.com, and e-mails. Mostly in that order. What else interests me? Obviously language and news, but which ones are the best for information? Spiegel, Focus, a foreign or a local newspaper for news stories? Wiki anything, obviously not. How many bookmarks does one need?

• Web Page

Well, while I think about what new bookmarks I could add, I open this account for the Weebly page. I've never had my own web page before. It is a little scary. I have my Facebook page set on the highest security possible. Even my husband had trouble finding me on there. Who will see this, really? Just the class? Just the teacher? I wonder, then, what my students will feel if we do a similar exercise in class. Would secret names and lack of personal information give them a good enough feeling of security online? Or are they still naive enough to not appreciate the dangers lurking and not even try to be guarded while online?(Go to my page on protection here.) Over the next few weeks, I hope to learn the ins and outs of responsible media in the classroom. Weebly is so easy to use and the best part is that it is free for private users.

• Dashboard

What is a dashboard? Go here for a definition. For this class, we are using netvibes. I really like this tool. It is like my own little desktop I can open anywhere from any computer. Weather, music, news (from here and back home), and the RSS feed for our media class. This is also free and fairly easy to use, although the colours are not as variable as I would like.
I have now added a few more bookmarks to my Delicious site. I think this is definitely going to be a big work in progress.


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