EDAD660 (2010)

Here’s a link to an interesting article about how Twitter is being used to solicit and collect donations from people around the world on behalf of those affected by this week’s earthquake in Haiti.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/13/technology/twitter_haiti_donations/index.htm

And here’s an article on how Google Maps is being used to compare before & after images to assess the devestation:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/14/haiti.google.maps.earthquake/index.html?hpt=T2

The following is a listing of useful and/or fun widgets that take advantage of the massive Flickr database of user-generated images.

1. 3D Flickr Widget (http://www.roytanck.com/get-my-flickr-widget/):  Using a Flickr RSS feed as its data source, this 3D Flickr widget creates a fun globe-like structure that lets people inspect photos on the sidebar of your page.  See the “Photos of Egypt” widget on the sidebar of our blog for a demo.
2. FlickrFlow (http://flickrflow.com/): Create a clickable slideshow to let visitors explore a Flickr feed from anywhere on your site.

You can construct an RSS feed for any “tag” on flickr by replacing the tag name in the text below with the tag you are looking for.

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=TAGNAME&format=rss_200

What is Delicious?

Delicious in Education

1. Delicious can be used as a group bookmarking site
2. The site can also be used to discover new resources
3. It can also be used to connect individuals with simliar interests, thus facilitating professional networking amongst people with similar interests.

What is Twitter?

Twitter in Education

1. Twitter can be used as a communication tool
   1. Teacher to student
   2. Student to teacher
   3. Administrative announcements
2. Twitter can be used to poll students in real-time during class
3. Twitter can be used as a way to increase student engagement and give voices to those who would not normally participate in class discussions

Additional information and ideas on how to use Twitter in an educational setting.

Twitter Visualizations

1. Twitsori:  http://twistori.com/
2. 6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations:  http://mashable.com/2009/06/30/gorgeous-twitter-visualizations/

In his guest lecture to our class, John Kuiphoff referenced a number of social media sites that we have yet to discuss.  Here’s a brief overview of some of the tools he mentioned during his talk.

• Twitter (http://www.twitter.com):  Twitter is a “microblogging” site that lets you post mini-status updates of 140 characters or less.  Updates posted to twitter are immediately added to the system and can be searched in real time.  For example, here is a real-time search of what people in the world are saying about “cairo”:  http://twitter.com/#search?q=cairo.  Individual messages sent via twitter are called “tweets” and can be composed on almost any device that has access to a telecommunications network, such as a computer, smartphone or even a standard mobile with SMS access.  Twitter is a great way to put your finger on the “pulse” of a particular topic and to see what the world is saying about it.
• Delicious (http://delicious.com/):  Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site.  It allows you to store links to your favorite websites and categorize them using your own “tags.”  Delicious is considered a “social” site due to the fact that your bookmarks are cross-referenced with other users – you can see how how many other people have bookmarked the same site, and you can see what kinds of tags they have used to classify the same resources.  This loose classification system (called a “folksonomy“) is at the core of what makes Web 2.0 applications so useful.  Many teachers use Delicious as a way for their students to maintain a set of class-related links.  By creating a delicious account specifically for a class and sharing the password with students, Delicious can act as a powerful documentation and discovery tool in almost any discipline.
• Digg (http://www.digg.com/): Digg is designed to do two things – facilitate the sharing of links and allow community members to vote on their popularity / relevance / coolness.  After logging in, users can submit a link to the community – from there other users can visit the link and, if they feel it is worthwhile, they can “digg” it.  Links that get the most “diggs” bubble to the home page of the site and become the most popular links of the day.  It’s a great way to see what is currently popular in the world, and usually yields some useful (and very funny!) results.
• Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/): Google Blog Search is exactly what it says – a search engine for the world’s blogs!  While most blog posts will show up in a general Google search, this search engine allows you to focus your search results on content that is being produced by other bloggers all across the world.
• Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/): Flickr is the world’s largest photo sharing site with over 4 billion photos available for public use.  Anyone can sign up for a flickr account and create any number of photo albums using the site’s intuitive controls.  In addition, every Flickr gallery has its own RSS feed, allowing you to “subscribe” to a Flickr feed.  Flickr takes advantage of “folksonomy” tagging and allows users to classify images using customized tags.
• Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/): Slideshare lets you convert Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents into embeddable media that can be used on your blog or website.  The system also allows you to control access to your content, letting you decide who can and can’t see your materials.  You can also incorporate audio into your materials, allowing you to create simple webinars that can be embedded on your site.

In addition, John referenced the Representing Earth blog from NYU.  This blog contains an impressive number of articles that relate to how we can visualize, quantify and understand the world through the lens of technology.