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Showing posts from January, 2006

Group blogs don't work in education?

Last week I managed to find the time to attend James Farmer's presentation on blogging for the TESOL evo2006 Blogging session . (You'll have to create an account at Learning Times to watch this session, but it's well-worth it) It was a shame that there were some audio problems, but all-in-all the session was very thought-provoking, but I think it raised more questions than it answered. James was clear and provocative in his opinions on what a edublog should be and how you should use it , and equally so on how you shouldn't use one, and what it isn't . For me, I had a problem with his insisting that group blogs (when they are not publications, if I heard him correctly) just don't work. I disagree and think I have been involved with and seen many group blogging projects in education that do work. Now don't get me wrong here, I do believe that the true power of blogging, and the ideal, lies in giving the individual the freedom to express him or herself, and

Social Bookmarking: with del.icio.us

I just finished writing a post to explain to participants of the evo2006 ELT Podcasting group why we have decided to use del.icio.us , and realised that it was probably worth sharing with people here too: Its use is not as obvious at first, but I find del.icio.us to be such a useful tool. I am going to try here to attempt to write a tailor-made explanation of why we're using this site: 1) Basically, the best way to approach it at first is as an online bookmarks/favourites space. Sign up for an account and you can store all your favourite links here instead of them being tied to your own computer (this is especially useful if you work in different places, or use several different computers) 2) But, this is only part of the story of why this site is so good. It's called 'social bookmarking' software and that gives us a clue to its real strength, especially for educators: - Del.icio.us uses tags ( key words ). Saving links with a unique tag ( podcasting_elt , for ex