The Social Bookmarking Faceoff

Social Bookmarking. I'm not too into it yet, but I'm getting there.

Social Bookmarking has two major components. (1) online bookmarking - the storing of you bookmarks online. (2) social sharing - your bookmarks are shared with others and the technology facilitates this sharing.

Here is a comparison of popular services from the Read/Write Web blog. It's nice to see that there are more options out there, but I've only heard about one of these.

The only one that I've used is del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us), which I've had mixed feelings about so far. I'm just getting to better understand how to use it best. (http://del.icio.us/danielcraig). The feature that I like the best is that it shows me how many other people have bookmarked the same site that I did.

Check these out for yourself in your spare time (if there's any).

Mr. Picassohead

Thanks for Elizabeth Hanson-Smith for bringing this to my attention (though there's no link on her post :)

Similar to the sketch program that I blogged about the other day, Mr. PicassoHead is a Flash interface that enables you to create a Picasso-esque picture in minutes. Not only is it fun, but this can be used with students in many ways: discussions on art/artists, creating characters for stories, or even an interesting twist on topics of bodyparts.

This one should be a little easier to save your finished product than the sketch application. All you have to do is email the finished product to yourself. However, I chose that option but haven't received my email yet (couple hours later).

Writer Zone (now called Windows Live Writer)

Here's one for you more adventurous types. This is the blog for Microsoft's "Live Writer".

This is an editor for blogs and it works with quite a few blogging application, including Blogger. Even though this was written for Microsoft's Live Spaces (think MySpace, but not as popular or good), it seems to work really well with Blogger.

For a full review, see my personal blog posting on it (Live Writer).

Grandview News

This is a nice example of elementary school publishing. Great examples of writing, graphics, and podcasting.

Thanks to weblogg-ed for pointing this one out.

Asian Mobile Web Years Ahead

Another timely post. I just replied to a mobile browser post in our discussion forum.

New Govt Report Exposes the School-Home Digital Divide | PBS

This is a rather timely post. I just referred to this topic in the forum. Andy Carvin blogs about a new report from the NCES regarding the digital divide.

Not too surprising, but informative.

The Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff

This post comes in pretty handy for me. I've been on the lookout for something a little better in the way of photo services.

I run my own photo gallery (surprise, surprise), but there's nothing "extra" about it. For example, Flickr makes it easy to organize, re-organize, share, insert in blogs and Web pages, and a new, nifty feature lets you organize your pictures by where they were taken (Flickr Map - click on the pink dots to see pictures). (Dan's Account)

However, I'm not into paying for the PRO account in Flickr, since I already pay quite a bit for my hosting service (my website). Though, the service is neat enough that I'm still thinking about it.

Anyway, it's nice to see a review on a few others. Check it out. Let me know if you give any of these services a try. It would be something nice to write up in your student blog.

Realistic face sketch

This blog points to an interesting Flash application. It is a face sketcher that really requires no drawing skill.

This is a fun tool, but it could be more than that. It could encourage students to create their portraits or for characters in student created literature.

Check it out. I spent way too much time on this one, but it was really fun :)

My wife wasn't very impressed with my sketch, but I got a kick out of it.

Unfortunately, it was really difficult to get the image this far. The designers did not intend for you to be able to save these images, so they might not be happy if I'm doing so (I apologize to them if they'd rather I not do this). I had to hit "Ctrl PrtSc", open my image editor, open a new image (should default to size of your screen), paste (Edit >> Paste), then crop out everything you don't want, then save.

Have fun

Top Italian Web Apps and more

Here's one for our resident Italian teacher in the class. Read/Write Web is an educational technology blog that I follow. Actually, it's more like a technology blog, but I find so many of the posting relevant to education.

In this post the author describe some Italian applications and describes the state of Web technology in Italy.

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Here is an interesting website for advanced grammar. It is a Blog/Podcast that covers really interesting grammar points.

The blog is a transcript of the podcast, which may help those of you who have trouble following the audio version. Actually, it even helps me because I need to see these things in print to really understand them. I assure you that these are points that I need help with all the time. This is one of the reasons I brought 4 of my best grammar books with me to Seoul :)

Grammar Girl's podcast is clear and she speaks at a moderate pace. It's slow enough that it will be easier for high-intermediate/advanced English langauge learners to understand, yet it's not so slow as to bore either the advanced learners nor their native English speaking teachers.

Enjoy.

Dan

Co-link

Thanks to Autono Blogger for pointing this one out.

I don't think that I have the time to add this function to my websites right now, but it's really a fascinating approach. Co-link essentially adds a menu to each of your links. That menu lists possible sites to visit. That's nothing special. What's great is that it also allows users to add links to the menu.

Just imagine. You visit a website and they link to a resource that you don't think is very good or you think that they also need to link somewhere else. You can just add a link there.

Now the down side. There doesn't seem to be any controls for managing these links. Let's face it, not everyone out there is looking to add value to your site. It would be nice if there were some tools to mitigate those nasty folks.

A site like Blogger could add this kind of control and use the same interface that they have for comments. Maybe even link moderation, just like they have comment moderation.

Maybe it's more trouble than it's worth, but I still think that it is even more than neat tech, it's a useful tool.

Welcome to CALL fall 2006

Hi Folks,

Welcome to the CALL Class blog. I'll use this blog solely for posting reviews and "how to's" of technologies and resources that I find useful for langauge teachers. For the first few postings, I'll cover some of the sites that we are using in this course including Moodle, Blogger, & Wikispaces.

Your role as a reader (and student) is to read the postings, check out these technologies, and comment on my postings. Comments can range from, "that's great...." to "how do I..."

Let me know if you have any questions.

Google Librarian Center

Some really good printable posters from Google on how to better use the search engine to find what you want to find.

My first Amazon/BookSurge self-publishing project

How would you all like to publish? Imagine a class putting a book together and having it available on Amazon.com! This could be really cool and the stripped down version is only $99 (though I'm not sure who would pay it)

This is a blog/web posting of the process that this guy followed to publish his own book on Amazon.

ULRTMT - Skype Version Now Supports Real-Time Translation

This is a very interesting utility that could be a great communication tool (not solution) for all of us.

Supposedly, this translator will translate, in real-time, one language to another in a Skype chat. Yet another reason for me to switch to Skype. I could even chat with my mother-in-law!

Most of the modules are BETA versions, but they might be worth a try.