14 great tools for teaching, learning and collaboration

When delivering introductory courses for teachers that want to start using Moodle, the most popular LMS used in Slovenian schools, I also like to share a list of my favorite tools that can be used with Moodle or independently. I think it's important for teachers to realize that a LMS can be a good starting point if you want to provide your students with an online hub for your course, but that there are many other tools out there that are better suited for certain needs.

And I just realized I haven't shared this list on my blog yet, so here it is: 14 great tools that can help teachers create interactive content, collaborate, and facilitate learning. All of these tools are free and available either online or on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac).

Desktop software

 Hot Potatoes - a simple, free tool for creating quizzes and other interactive activities that can be easily included into Moodle.

 eXeLearning - a free, open source software for creating and publishing web content. Teachers can easily export content into SCORM and add it to Moodle. Great for our teachers because it's also available in Slovenian (and other languages).

Xmind - an open source brainstorming and mind mapping tool.

Google tools

Google Docs - easy to use collaborative tool for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

 Google Sites - a simple tool for creating web pages.

Blogger - free, simple to use blogging platform. If my grandpa can use it, so can your non-tech savy teachers and students. Love the fact that you can have private blogs, available only to specified readers.

Picasa and Picasa web albums - Google's free image organizer and editor that also supports free web albums. I admit - I don't really use Picasa (I have iPhoto on my Macs), but my grandpa loves it, so I like to recommend it to non-Mac folks.

Multimedia

ScreenToaster - free online screen recorder. Can easily be used for simple screencasts.

Audacity - open source audio editing software. Again, as an iLife user, I don't really use it myself, but I know a lot of teacher who use it in classrooms.

Anywhere, anything

Evernote - my absolutely favorite tool for notes and what not. I use it to write drafts fro blog posts or messages for my students, to save notes while grading, as a collection of links and ideas and so much more. I love the fact that it's both a desktop and online app, so you can really access all your notes from anywhere (even on my mobile phone).

Google Reader - web RSS reader. My favorite way of keeping track of blogs on all sorts of different subjects.

Dropbox - I've got to agree with their tagline: "the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online". I even know teachers that use Dropbox to collect student's assignments, and it's also great as a personal backup tool and as a way to collaborate on files with others.

Sharing

SlideShare - my favorite tool for sharing presentations that can easily embedded almost anywhere on the web.

Scribd - simple tool for publishing docs and embedding them almost anywhere on the web.


And that's it, that's the list of tools I like to show to teachers starting to explore digital learning and learning. Yes, yes, I know there are many other tools that would deserve to be on the list, so I also provide a link to Jane Hart's amazing Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 List (but a list of 14 items is usually easier to digest for beginners).

So, here's my questions for you: which 14 tools would your put on your list, while keeping in mind they should be easy enough for beginners and freely available on all platforms? Let me know in the comments!

7 things I love about Evernote

In the Web 2.0 era I don't really use a lot of desktop applications anymore - everything is on the web, right? But there is one application that I just can't imagine living without (even though you can also use it on the web): Evernote.

You might have heard of Evernote before - after all, it now has over 4 million (very happy) users. At its hearth, Evernote is a simple note taking app that works on almost every computer, phone and mobile device out there, and can instantly sync your notes across all your devices. You can use it as a repository for all your ideas - not just in shape of simple text notes, but also as webpages, photos, audio recordings and various files. For a nice overview of the service, check out the intro video below:

How can you not love a service that includes hard working cloud elephants? ;) If the video hasn't convinced you to give Evernote a try yet, here is my list of 7 things I love about Evernote:

1) Available anywhere

I love the fact that I always have access to Evernote, regardless of which computer or mobile device I'm using. And with the desktop version, I don't even have to be online to work with Evernote (very useful on train trips!). Most of the time, I use the Mac OS X desktop version, but I sometimes check notes on my Android phone or iPod Touch. And yes, there's also a Windows version, a web version and custom applications for major smartphone platforms (see the list of available downloads).

2) Free for basic use

Oh, did I mention it's free? You don't have to pay for basic use or any of the apps. But in case you need more space or want awesome features like Note history, you can go Premium for $5/month or $45/year. I'm still using the Free version, which has plenty of space for all my text notes, but I'm thinking of going Premium just because I find the service so useful.

3) Capture ideas, prepare them for publishing

With Evernote I finally have a single place to store all my ideas and little notes. No more sticky notes all over the desk, no more .txt files on the desktop, just one app. And I also find it great for transforming ideas I collect into drafts that I can move to blogs, text editing software etc. for final design and publishing. And yes, I also wrote the draft for this post in Evernote and only moved it to Blogger when it was nearly finished. I really prefer to write in the simple, clutter free Evernote window - I usually double click the note I'm working on and leave just that note window open.

4) Easy sync

I always use Evernote to take notes on my laptop during meetings. No more wasted paper and illegible hand written notes! And if you still need to draw something on paper or whiteboard, you can just take a picture of that and add it to your Evernote meeting note. The best part is getting home after meetings to find the latest notes already waiting for me on my desktop computer. In other words, no extra time needed to sort and read through notes, as I can start working right within Evernote.

5) Image recognition in the cloud

The cool part is that Evernote is not just a simple backup service for notes. In fact, the Evernote elephants in the cloud also do image recognition on any photos you add, so that it's easier for you to find your stuff. You can for instance use Evernote to scan and save images of business cards and Evernote makes sure all the text becomes searchable.

6) Different ways to search and sort

There are many different ways to sort notes in Evernote. I like to create new notebooks for major projects or areas of interests, and you can use tags to sort your notes even further. I must admit I'm pretty sloppy when it comes to using tags, but that's ok - Evernote doesn't mind that, and helps me find what I'm looking for through Search.

7) The magic Evernote Trunk

And if you're looking for ways to improve Evernote, look no further than into the Evernote Trunk! The Trunk, also accessible from the desktop applications, is basically a showcase of apps that work with Evernote and can enhance your Evernote experience. The Trunk has only been launched this summer, so I'm really looking forward to seeing more apps added in the future.

Nearly perfect for remembering everything

The only two feature requests I have for Evernote are better sharing/collaboration options within the desktop app and color coding for notes. But other than that, I really think Evernote is a great product that is simple, yet incredibly flexible and usable in all sorts of situations.

So, if you're not using Evernote yet, I suggest you give it a try and see how it works for you. Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to use it - be creative and start adding your ideas in any format into your digital notebooks. And if you're looking for new ideas on how to use Evernote, check out the Tips and Stories section on the Evernote blog.

If you've got any good Evernote tips, let me know in the comments!

Google Wave: First impressions

I recently got my Google Wave invite* (thanks to Jure) and I wanted to share some of my initial impressions. As most of you probably know already, Google Wave is an online real-time collaboration and communication tool, which combines elements of e-mail, instant messaging, social networks and wikis (watch the overview video for more info).

It was first announced in May, with a big promise of reinventing e-mail for the 21st century. It has been in private beta for some time now, and it's been getting mixed reviews with many people marking it as overhyped. So I was really curious to try it out on my own and see if it can live up to its (big) expectations.

I've now been using Google Wave for about a week with various existing and new contacts. Currently, one big limitation is that you don't get any invites when you start using the service, so your pool of contacts is initially quite limited and therefore you probably won't be able to immediately use the tools in that many real-life situations. Overall, I still believe this tool has a lot of potential to replace many collaboration tools (don't think it will replace e-mail in the near future though), but it still needs some important features before if can go really public.


The cool features

These are the main things I like about Wave:

• the basic functions are quite easy to use and understand (although I was already familiar with the basic philosophy and interface from watching the hour long developer preview),
• easier to use than wikis because of a familiar e-mail like interface,
• the ability to collaborate in different ways,
• adding links with the Google Search function is really cool,
• you can get a lot of additional functionality with Wave extensions like the Mind Map gadget shown below.

Using the Mind Map Gadget in a wave: the initial mind map was created by me, other participants were able to add and vote on the elements

The missing features

And here are the main things that I don't like:

• you can't add new Wave extensions with one simple click (here is how you do it - ouch!),
• embedding waves on the web should be as easy as embedding YouTube videos,
• as a wave creator, you should have more control over who can edit your waves and in what way (currently every wave participant can edit everything in a wave),
• when using Wave you're always shown as online to your contacts and there's nothing you can do about it,
• participants in the same wave can see what you're typing in real-time and you can't change that; real-time typing is useful in some cases, but not always (a good thing about e-mail is that you can rethink and rewrite your message before it gets sent out),
• you should be able to organize contacts into groups,
• the ability to edit blips in a wave and adding in-line comments isn't very intuitive or easy to use, so most people just keep adding replies at the end of the wave, which easily turns waves into noisy chatrooms; as my friend Angela said in a wave conversation: "It's the same as IRC but with rich content",
• you can't delete waves.

Bottom Line: Not there yet, but certainly useful in the real world

So, Google Wave provides a lot of great functions, but it lacks many privacy/permissions settings, plus a lot of features are still too difficult to use. A lot of users also complain that it can also be quite slow (especially if you add a lot of extensions in a long wave). But let's not forget that Wave is still in beta, so I hope that some of the main annoyances get fixed before it opens up to the public. I browsed through Product Ideas for Google Wave today, and I think most users agree on the basic improvements that Wave needs.

Even though my list of missing features isn't short, I'm still a Google Wave believer and can't wait to try it out in the real world. For example, I really like the idea of using Google Wave at conferences and in classrooms or the ability to use Google Wave widgets in Moodle courses (I'm also looking forward to an activity module for embedding whole waves into Moodle).


Links that can get you started

If you're just getting started with Google Wave and still feeling a bit lost, I suggest you check out the 5 minutes overview of 15 key Google Wave features and Mashable's Google Wave Complete Guide. If you're on a Mac, you can also try out Waveboard, a desktop app for Google Wave. Personally, I keep Waveboard always open, so I can see when new waves or changes are made. And there is also Waver, an Adobe AIR Wave client, which works on all operating systems.


Let me know about your first impressions in the comments or let's talk about it in Google Wave! (my username is alja.sulcic (at) googlewave [dot] com)


* Sorry, don't have any invites to send out yet, will tweet when I do.

Zemanta: making blogging fun again

Blogging can be quite a time consuming activity if you want to get it just right. First, you have to find something interesting to write about, then you have to find the right words to present your point, and if that wasn't enough, you also have to find and choose suitable images, links and tags to make your post more useful for the ready and also to establish context of your post. The last part of the blogging process may seem like the easiest one, but if you've ever spent some time on linking all the names in your blog post or searching for the right image, you know that it can take away a lot of your precious time. But fear not fellow bloggers! Zemanta, a startup from Slovenia, is here to help you with a content suggestion tool for your blog posts.

The only thing you need to do, is to install their Firefox plugin (found on their website) and start writing your post on any Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad blog (with more support coming soon, they promise). As you write, you will start seeing link ang tag suggestions, and a list of images and articles that might be relevant to your post. The good thing is that all suggested material has a Creative Commons license, so you can use it without fear of copyright infringement. You see all the hyperlinks in this post? And the related articles? I added all of that just by clicking on the suggestions provided by Zemanta's plugin as I was writing this post. I usually like to add my own custom images to my blog posts, but I really appreciate the ease of adding links to all the sites/concepts I usually mention in my blog posts with a simple click.

You can also see a demo of the Zemanta plugin in the following video:

Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.

I should mention that the technology is still in development, so it may not work perfectly all the time, but I'd suggest everyone to try it out and see if it works for you. So far, I can give it thumbs up and a big thank you for doing the time consuming job for me and for allowing me to focus on the content. I'm looking forward to see how they'll be developing their technology further and make blogging even more fun for us!

Related articles

• Zementa Brings a Semantic Layer to Your Blog [via Zemanta]
• A content suggestion engine for blogging? That could work... [via Zemanta]

metaHUD - bringing Web 2.0 to Second Life

A big part of what makes Second Life so appealing for me is the ability to meet and interact with interesting people from all over the world. I've been in Second Life for over a year now and in this time I've made some great friends with whom I love to discover new places in SL, have great serendipity moments or attend various events with. And we use a lot of different tools to keep in touch - mainly Twitter and Facebook. But I often wished for an easier way to let my SL friends know about a great event going on or a great place I'm just visiting... and that is why I was really excited to discover a new Second Life tool last week called metaHUD.

metaHUD is a HUD (Head-Up Display) that you can wear in Second Life. The developers of metaHUD like to describe it as a social networking platform for Second Life that enables Second Life residents to share their Second Life with friends. It can also be used only as a search engine for SL places and products and as a shopping tool, but its real power is in allowing residents to follow and use what their friends are doing. Let's see how this is done through different parts of the HUD.


metaTravel - Travel guide

When you're wearing the metaHUD, it keeps track of your teleport history and other activities, and stores all that into your personal Timeline. Whenever you teleport to a new place, you can rate it by simply choosing a green thumbs up or red thumbs down button. If you wish, you can also tag the place to make it easier for other metaLIFE users to find it through keyword search, and you can even leave a comment about the place. If you really like the place, you can also add it to your Favorites (works similarly as the "Picks" tab in standard SL profiles).


metaFriends and metaTIME - Social life

Next, the metaHUD offers the ability to search for people. If your friends use metaHUD, you can view their Timeline, Favorites, Home location, choose to follow that person (if you follow a person, you have their updates in the Friends Timeline), and even add tags and comments to their metaHUD profile. The Timeline feature is very similar to the Facebook Mini-Feed that tells you what a friend of yours has been doing on FB - in the metaHUD the Timeline tells you what a friend has been doing in SL. Also, the ability to add comments is similar to the FB wall feature. So basically, we can now have some of the useful features of web social networking sites within Second Life!

Now, if you're a Twitterholic like me you might wonder whether there's also a way to post your status to friends. Well, you don't have a separate place in the metaHUD to answer the question What are you doing?, but what you can do is add comments to places you're visiting - and that appears in your metaHUD Timeline, so friends can easily read a comment that says "There is a great concert going on in this place!". Of course, not always the best solutions, but when I talked about this with Robbie Kiama (one of the developers), he told me that they are planning to make a RSS feed from your Timeline and add better connectivity with Twitter and similar services, which is something I'm really looking forward to!


metaStore - Shopping channel

And let's not forget that the metaHUD also lets you use the metaLIFE Meta Mart shopping system, which enables you to browse items in the Meta Mart system that are for sale (apart form an alphabetical list you also have lists of Latest, Favorite, Popular, Purchased and Free items), search for items using keywords, rate and comment virtual items (thus making it easier for other user to find good content), and you can also buy items directly from the HUD itself. Kind of what you can do on SL Exchange or Onrez, but without having to switch back and forth between the SL viewer and your browser. The shopping feature is of course very handy, and it even allows you to teleport to the actual store if you want to (something I personally miss on the web shopping sites!) and even send items as a gift to friends.

If you're a content creator, you can find more info on how to sell your items through the Meta Mart system on this page. There is also a paid Referring Partner system that can earn you some L$, but I personally haven't tried it yet.


meta-LIFE.net - Web interface

And finally, the metaHUD also generates a personal password for you, which can be used to sing in to the meta-LIFE.net site. Here you can manage your metaHUD profile and items (if you're selling your objects through the metaHUD Store), and manage your metaHUD privacy settings, so you get to decide whether your teleport info, shop history, and other actions are visible to all metaHUD users, your friends only or nobody but you.

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I've been using the metaHUD for a few days and here's what I personally think are its strong points:

• easy to use, the interface is consistent, and the HUD is quite fast once it loads,
• great list of features (my favorite is the Friends Timeline),
• customized privacy settings,
• doesn't obstruct your view too much when minimized.

But of course, the product was just released and there is always room for some more improvement. Here's what's on my wish list for the next versions:

• a version that can be used on the left or even top/bottom part of the screen (currently the HUD is made for the right side of the screen, which in my case is already taken by other HUDs, so it'd be great to have more choice),
• the option to receive an IM when chosen actions from Friends happen,
  
• more web connectivity (especially with Twitter),
• added support for events (the ability to announce events and sign up for events).

But all in all I think the metaHUD is a great product that finally brings some Web 2.0 in-world. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the metaLIFE team for future projects, as they really have some great ideas. Yesterday they also released metaPRESENTER, a presentation screen for SL that is controlled through a HUD. Pretty neat! You can of course get your free metaPRESNTER through the metaHUD, which you can pick up at the in-world Meta Mart location. And please, do feel free to leave a comment under this post with you opinion about the metaHUD, I'd love to hear what you think about it!

Facebook - what, why, how?

Yes, I know it's been awhile since my last blog post - but rest assured, I haven't forgotten about my blog, it's just that lately I've been dedicating more time to other social channels, especially Twitter and Facebook, and of course also my Second Life. I really believe that you have to get immersed in any new technology in order to really understand it and be able to figure out why it works for so many people.

I already wrote about what I believe to be the magic behind Twitter, and today I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts on Facebook. I decided to choose this subject not only because I find Facebook quite fascinating, but also because there are a lot of people out there wondering what FB is all about and what it should/can be used for. In fact, FB might seem pretty straightforward, but it can take some time to figure it out. And that is why I've decided to share my personal experience with FB.

Ok, let's just start with the basics. As you probably know, FB is a very popular social networking site, which enables you to create your profile and connect with friends. In addition to this, it has its own developer platform, which developers can use to build different applications that enable users to do more or less useful activities. Yes, these apps only work in the closed environment of FB, making the site almost some kind of web operating system that doesn't want to talk to the rest of the web on its own, but requires developers to learn its language (called FBML) to bring the magic of the web and social interactions to it. Not surprisingly, many people criticize FB for being a walled garden, and Google is now trying hard to out open social networks with OpenSocial; but for an average Joe all this is not very relevant. If you've got most of your friends on FB and a lot of fun things to do, you don't really care how it's done, so I'll discuss the OpenSocial vs FB platform (or the new FB advertising options) some other time. Today, I'd just like to focus on the user perspective about various uses of FB apps, which in my opinion are the magic ingredient that make FB so appealing to an increasing number of users (some might add: and such a time waster ;) ).

I think we can divide FB apps, and consequently FB's value for the users, in three main categories:

• Self-promotion and branding: At its core, FB is a place where you can build your own profile. When we build an online profile, we create our online persona, which will be seen by our friends or even the entire world. We might not realize that, but when we fill in various profile fields or choose our profile picture, we decide how we want to be presented to the world. You might want to emphasize your professional side or your fun side; but in both cases we make a choice in how we "brand" ourselves to our public (which we can choose by limiting our profile only to contacts for example). And there are many FB functions and apps that can help us build our persona (or even our personal brand), for example: various default profile options (picture, interests, work & education info, favorite things,...), joining groups (the FB groups function is awful, but I find it useful to publicly express my interest in certain topics), labeling yourself as a fan of something (made possible by the new product pages), your choice and variety of friends, the choice of profile layout (choosing which info to make public, having your music playlist, favorite quotes or the result of a personality test displayed, ...), your FB statuses, the items that appear in our mini-feed etc.. Some people even prefer having multiple profiles for different personas (for example, a different account for their Second Life avatar). Building our FB persona can be quite a task, and a lot of people choose to use just this aspect of FB. They register, fill in the info and connect with friends, and use FB just to say "I'm online too - if you want to connect to me use my e-mail/phone number".
• Social play: The next category of FB apps enables us to have fun and keep in touch with out friends. We all have busy lives, a lot of our friends live in different cities or even parts of the world, and it's often not easy to find the time or way to hang out together. And here is where FB can help: it enables us to keep in touch with friend through different social (often playful) activities. Even if you're extremely busy, you can always find a minute or two to poke your friends, throw a sheep at them, turn them into a zombie or send them a virtual pet, flower or image. All these apps help us say "I'm thinking about you" in different ways. It might look silly, but it feels nice to receive virtual cakes when you set your status to ill. We often like to say "It's the thought that counts", and I think the social play apps in FB are a great proof of that. Also, the FB news feed, which displays various news about our friends, can help us feel closer to each other as it's constantly reminding of people, telling us what they are doing and providing an easy way to interact with them ("Click here to hug your friend too"). Sure, the feed items are a great way for developers to promote their app, but it does have some positive side effects I've just mentioned.
  
• (Social) toolbox: The last category of apps is represented by a set of utilities that can help you save time, provide useful information and even be more organized. These apps can make FB a more "serious" tool. They enable us things like checking our e-mail, collaborating on documents with friends, getting info about weather, keeping track of what time it is for our friends that live in different time zones (my latest favorite app!), displaying latest blog entries from your friends and yourself and much more. These apps are the main reason why people are considering using FB as a business tool or even an e-learning tool. It's comfortable to be able to do so many different things (from play to work) on one single site, and if we want so, we can even make our "serious" activities social by choosing to display info from utility apps on our profile, and thus provide some valuable info to our contacts (I like to use FB Posted Items for this purpose).

These categories can of course often be overlapping - for example, social play apps or social toolbox apps can be used as a branding tool, and often the line between social play and social toolbox can be a fine one. An important point to remember here is that you don't need to use every aspect of Facebook; use what makes sense to you. It's fine if you just want to create a basic profile, and it' fine if you just want to use FB as a social toolbox and ignore the play aspects.

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I'd like to conclude this post with some basic Facebook tips that I hope can help you in the process of getting to know FB and finding the added value of this tool for you:

• Play with FB, but make sure you've got friends to play with. Try out different apps, explore, and be curious, but try not to annoy your friends while doing that. You don't have to send out invites to ALL of your friends for EVERY app you add (there's always a Skip button!). Show your friends you care and know them by sending them invitations for apps that you are pretty sure will be interesting for them.
• Take some time to adjust your privacy settings. Decide which info/activities can be public, for friends or entirely private. You can also decide whether you want your name to appear in search or not. In the future we'll have the abilities to group friends and have different profiles for close friends, professional contacts, family etc.; but until we don't, try to figure out the best way to present yourself to all the people on your contacts list. You might want consider using the limited profile contacts you don't know well. You can find all these settings under the Privacy link in the upper right corner.
• Remember that you don't need to have every app you use on your profile. You can access apps from the left-hand menu or the application list. Removing an app box from your profile only will not delete the app, and you will still be able to receive gifts, bite chumps and do all the other *fun* activities. Your friends can often see your app info (for example: Linkeness score) from the app itself, so there's really no need to keep everything on your profile. I know it's not easy, but try not to overload your profile page. When I choose what I want on my profile or not, I like to think about what info I can provide to a new friend that want to get to know me better, and what info I can provide to friends that I haven't spoken in a while. So, to put it simply, take care of your persona, and remember that you can choose the visibility for each profile element. Some info are for friends only while you might want to have some available public.

But of course, this post is based entirely of my Facebook experience in the past few months, and I'm sure we all have our own story to tell. So I'm really interested in hearing your Facebook story: how and why are you using FB, and what is in your opinion the added value of FB over other social networks? Also, what do you think are the best tips you could give to people just starting with FB or people still trying to figure out what the fuss is about?

Giving your Facebook profile a Second Life

If you are like me, you probably have some of your Second Life friends among your Facebook friends. And until recently, we had no good way of connecting the two worlds. But now we can; and there isn't just one, but two Facebook applications that can help you with that.

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Second Friends
The first app (by release order) is called Second Friends and was developed by Art Fossett (I'm using the developer's SL names in both cases). The app lets you display your avatar name and picture and a list of your Facebook friends that are using Second Friends on your Facebook profile. To use the app you need to do two things: you need to add the app on Facebook, and you need to pick up a personal key at an in-world kiosk on Eduserv island (you can reset the app and get a new key anytime).

In-world kiosk on Eduserv island for Second Friends

You can then enter the key and your avatar name in the Second Friends form in Facebook. If you got that right, the app will import your Second Life profile picture into Facebook, and you are ready to display your SL name and avatar picture (if you wish so) on your profile.

To add and check for Facebook friends that are using Second Friends, you have to go to the My Friends tab under the app, and a list of friends (including their RL and SL names) will be added to your profile. If you wish, you can also choose to display their SL profile pictures instead. The functionality of this app is pretty simple right now, but future plans include adding an in-world tool for updating your Second Friends status while in Second Life and more.

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Second Life Link
The second app, Second Life Link, was developed by Fire Centaur and another developer. It enables you to display your Facebook using SL friends in a similar way to the Facebook's defalt friends' list.

The setting up process is similar to the one you have to go through with Second Friends, although it has a few extra functions. You can start the process by either adding the app on Facebook or by touching the in-world terminal in English Village.

Fire Centaur standing beside the Second Life Link terminal in English Village

In both cases you will get a personal key that you must enter either on Facebook or in-world (again, you can get another key anytime). A neat thing about Second Life Link is also the fact, that your Facebook friends get the option to register for a Second Life account on Facebook (in case they don't already have one) after adding the app. So you can also send invites for the app to Facebook friends that don't have a second life and trick them into getting one ;) After you've confirmed your identity, the app will automatically fill in your friends list with Facebook friends that are already using the app. Then you can also modify your Second Life Link profile by adding your avatar photo and one home and one favorite SL location you want to share with friends. Your SL friends will then be displayed on your profile with avatar photos and names, and if you click the See All link in the app on your profile or access the app from the left-hand menu, you can view whether your friends are online or offline in SL, and you can also teleport to their home or favorite location from Facebook.

That's how my friends using Second Life Link can see me

Second Life Link also has advanced privacy settings, as you can see from the screenshot below, so you have full control of what your friends can see/do.

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Both apps are still in beta, and I'm sure both developers will welcome our feedback. Currently, I have both apps installed and appearing on my Facebook profile, because they both help me connect my Second and Facebook life in a bit different way. I'm certainly looking forward to new features of both apps; and who knows, maybe we'll soon be able to "throw a sheep at" or "poke" our friends in SL from Facebook (throwing sheep should look spectacular in SL! ;) ). But for now, I'm really excited about the fact that my SL friends can get a special place on my Facebook profile. So, if you're a Facebook and Second Life user and want to connect the two, I recommend you give both apps a try, and let me (and of course the developers) know what you like/don't like, and what features would best for future versions :)

Skitch: Fast 'n' Easy photo sharing (review)

Last night I finally got a invite for Skitch, an application (currently for Macs only) that lets you easily capture and annotate photos and share them with friends through web (on your myskitch page), by mail, Bluetooth or just by saving the image to your hard drive. Skitch offers different ways for getting images: you can take snapshots (it's easy to capture just part of your screen), take a photo through your camera or work on any photo on your hard drive or on the web by dragging it into Skitch. Once you've got a photo in, you can add text and various shapes, and do a few basic edits. When you're done, you can easily share it in any way you want. And what if you want to change the text or delete a shape later? No problem, you can always come back to the saved or uploaded images later and edit them again through Skitch (by the way - Skitch can also export images in the svg format; apart from the standard jpg, png, pdf and tif of course).

Uploaded with Skitch!

I saw the promo video of Skitch some time ago, but then I really didn't imagine how great it is to actually use it. It's super fast, very easy to use (I love the fact that you get subtle, not intrusive, and useful help tips just when you need them), and it works like magic (even though it's still a beta). The app was created by plasq, the makers of Comic Life (another application I love to use!), and I can only hope that we all get a copy of Skitch in the next releases of Mac OS X (just like we get the basic version of Comic Life).

Uploaded with Skitch!

I really see myself using this application a lot for different purposes. One obvious use is surely making images for blogs, and I think it will also be great for making annotated screenshots for user manuals (which can be really time consuming!), sharing ideas fast or just having fun by adding captures to photos :) Skitch is surely a great product that wisely uses simplicity and provides with all the tools you need to make photo sharing a bit more fun and fast. I think I'll keep the Skitch icon (it's a cute pink heart :) ) in my dock from now on, just in case I need to skitch something fast (it's surely much faster than Photoshop for simple tasks Skitch was built for). The only negative comment I can make about Skitch so far, is the fact that I didn't get a 100 invites, so unfortunately I can't yet invite you all to try it :(

If you want to know more about Skitch, take a look at plasq's site and watch the Skitch introductory video, which is in my opinion a great example of how to make an attractive video manual for first time users (I usually give up on video manuals after a few seconds, but this one kept me interested).

Edit: Just got 100 invites to give out! Leave you e-mail under the comments or e-mail me at ialja (at) mac (dot) com to get an invite and to try out the Skitch magic :)

RSS in Plain English in 3.5 minutes

I just wanted to share with you a great video that explains what RSS feeds are in plain English in 3.5 minutes:

Click To Play

Just what I've been looking for an introduction to RSS! I'm just amazed that so many people are still unaware of this great technology. But of course that also means that are still many people out there that we can show the magic of RSS to ;) RSS feeds really help me to get all the interesting news; although I admit that I sometimes do feel overwhelmed by so many new items calling for attention and deserving to be read on my own computer :)

(By the way: for more info on the video check this Common Craft post)

View Blogger Labels in a Label Cloud

If you are a faithful reader of my blog (ah, the dreams of a young blogger ;) ) you might have noticed that my post labels are now organized in a tag (label) cloud. How cool is that? :) Yesterday, a reader reminded me that I haven't wrote a word about how to achieve this, and I must admit I simply forgot to post about this *blushes* (thanks Dino for the reminder!).

So, if you're blogging on the new blogger and want to get a label cloud, just follow these simple instructions. Don't be afraid when you see all the code (though make sure to backup your existing blog template before you try anything new!). Mainly it's just copy and paste, and the author provided a great explanation on how to customize the settings of the label cloud. I just wish I had a label cloud when I started blogging. I always felt so limited by the default label view because I don't like long lists and it was sometimes so hard to limit myself to using just 10 labels. Now the label cloud might seem a bit messier, but I think it's just a better visualization of the purpose and topics I like to blog about :)

And by the way, here are a few links about tag clouds:

• the Wikipedia Tag cloud page
• some interesting posts on Joe Lamantia's blog:
• Tag Clouds Evolve: Understanding Tag Clouds
• Second Generation Tag Clouds
• Text Clouds: A New Form of Tag Cloud?
  

Playing with Flickr

I know Flickr has been around for quite some time, but until now I haven't really felt the need to use their service. I didn't have many photos to share, and I wasn't particularly interested in searching for other people's photos either. However, Flickr has been on my to-join list for some time because of its potential educational uses, and today I finally took the time to create an account. Primarily I wanted to do this so I could share the graphics I've created so far for my blog, because until now you only got access to my graphics in separate posts and that really isn't very Web 2.0 ;) So, here it is, my iAlja blog graphics set.

I also wanted to try out the Groups feature of Flickr, so I created The faces of Moodle, a group where I'd like to see the looks of different Moodle sites around the world. So, feel free to join me on Flickr, and if you have a Moodle site please post a screenshot of it to my group (and don't forget to put it on the map ;) ).

A list of basic resources on Web 2.0 concepts and tools

These days I'm busy revising and rewriting some study materials for our E-business course. In this year we'll hopefully be adding a chapter dedicated to currently popular web tools and concepts. For this purpose I've written a quick guide to some Web 2.0 concepts and tools (although I think that the best way for our students to learn about Web 2.0 would be to let them create their own study material using collaboration and Web 2.0 tools).

In this post I'm sharing a list* of web resources that were the most useful to me while writing about these concepts. I hope the listed resources might also be useful (or at least interesting) for you.

Web 2.0 defined:

• Tim O'Reilly: What Is Web 2.0 (the essential Web 2.0 article)
• Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: "nobody even knows what it means" (if you want to be fair you've got to show other opinions as well)

Web 2.0 related concepts:

• Chris Anderson: The Long Tail (THE Wired article that put a name on the Long Tail)
• Brynjolfsson, Hu & Smith: From Niches to Riches: The Anatomy of the Long Tail (an interesting research paper about the Long Tail phenomena)
• Tony Zhu: Google PageRank: Facts and Fiction (a simple yet interesting Q&A list of facts about Google's PageRank algorithm)
  
• Wired News: Folksonomies Tap People Power (about tagging content and the value it adds to web content)
  
• Dick Weisinger: Metadata: Folksonomy and the Art of Tagging in the Enterprise (thoughts about using folksonomy in the enterprise world)

About wikis:

• Brian Lamb: Wide Open Spaces: Wikis Ready or Not (an article about wikis and the use of wikis in education)
  
• Tom Stafford & Matt Webb: What Is a Wiki (and How to Use One for Your Projects) (a guide for choosing and using a wiki system for different projects)
• Tim Duckett: Four ways to use wikis for project management
  
• Philip Evans: The Wiki Factor (about why wikis are important for business students)
• Wired News: Wikipedia, Britannica: A Toss-Up (yet another article about the comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica)

Some public wikis that might be interesting for our students:

• Wikibooks (freely available wiki books - for business students there's also a business bookshelf)
  
• Wikiversity (learning materials and activities)
  
• Wikimapia (a wiki system that uses Google maps and on which you can add info about locations all around the world)
  
• Wiktionary (a wiki dictionary)

About blogs/blogging:

• Wikipedia: Blog (the Wikipedia article about blogs is imho quite good - I especially like the part about types of blogs)
• Anne Bartlett-Bragg: Blogging to Learn (a paper about blogs in general and more specifically about blogging in education)
  
• Tim Duckett: 10 ways to use blogs for managing projects
  
• Neville Hobson: Blog vs forum: What's the difference? (some thoughts about the differences in focus between blogs and forums)

About web feeds:

• Will Richardson: RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators (a really simple guide about web feeds)
• Heinz Tschabitscher: RSS Feeds are the Better Email Newsletters (some advantages of web feeds over traditional email newsletters)

*Do note that this is a very basic list of resources. If you think I've missed any important or interesting links please leave me a comment :)

Google Page Creator: Simplicity and power

I already revealed myself as a Google fan in one of my previous posts and again there's some great news coming from Google that can be in my opinion be useful in education. Here's the thing - Google Page Creator now has some extra powerful features. As described in the post Simplicity and power, you can now edit images you upload to Google Page Creator within the browser (not in Safari though :( ), you can multiple sites with different addresses and the feature I'm most exited about: all sites made with Google Page Creator have a mobile edition without you having to move a finger! Now that is cool! I really appreciate all the support Google is giving to mobile devices.

These new feature and the existing simplicity of the service yet again confirm my opinion that our students should be using web publishing tools to make web sites. Goodbye FrontPage, hello Google Page Creator! Making web sites is now easy, intuitive and when necessary you can still edit the HTML code (that is if you're a geek like me and want to have complete control of the code :) ) But for our students Google Page Creator is in my opinion a wonderful tool to learn about how web sites work, practice linking in between sites and plan the structure of a site - which is after all what they'll mostly be required to understand in their professional lives. And most importantly - tools like that give the students the freedom to focus on the content and forget about the dull (for most of the students) technical details of what they are doing.

We're still discussing about how to restructure the E-business course for the next year and though many options are still open (wikis, blogs) I really think Google Page Creator is a serious player in this game!

(By the way: Here's my first Google Page :) Easy to make, easy to publish.)

Feeling lost on the web?

If you don't know where to go or what to try next on the web, I suggest checking out these sites:

• Popurls - want to know the latest news, pics, videos on the web? That's a site that can help you.
• Go2Web20.net - self-named complete Web 2.0 directory. A great starting point to find interactive Web 2.0 sites!

Yep, these two sites can really keep you busy! :)

Who wants to be a member of the European Parliament?

Coming from Poland there's an new online game that imitates the European Parliament. In the game players from EU (and other) countries can discuss current issues, join political fractions, cast their votes and much more. You can read more about this game in this article or on the game site: http://www.bemep.eu/. Supposedly there will also be e-learning lessons that will teach participants about EU politics, though non are currently available.

As you can guess, I already signed up for the game and taken a look around. I am still looking for a fraction that promotes e-learning to join - or maybe I'll just create my own e-learning/geek fraction ;) Jokes apart - I think the game is a great EU initiative that will hopefully help us to learn more about the mysterious EU politics and build a stronger EU identity.

List of free open source software (Mac & Win)

Two essential websites that list the best open source software:

• Open Source Mac
• Open Source Windows

Right now I'm giving Democracy Player a try. The player enables subscription to video RSS feeds and is available for all major platforms. Sounds interesting!

My favorite education/learning quotes

In this post I'd like to provide a list to some of my favorite education/learning related quotes. Why? Because I think they can be used to as an reflection on what we are doing as educators and how is this affecting our students - and although thinking reflection will not by itself make big changes in our work, it can be the first step toward great new practices and ideas that can make a change.

Plato:
“Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren's grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.”
“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

Socrates:
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”

Chinese proverb:
“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”

Oscar Wilde:
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”

Albert Einstein:
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

Robert Frost:
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.”
“There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”

Tom Bodett:
“The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.”

Roger Lewin:
“Too often students are given answers to remember, rather than problems to solve”

All quotes were found on ThinkExist.com - have fun at finding your favorite quotes!

Apple Dashboard Widgets on Windows

So, what can you do if you're stuck on Windows and want to use Apple Dashboard Widgets? You can go to Widgetop - a site that imitates Mac OS X widgets in your browsers (the site supposedly works best with Firefox). The whole thing isn't as pretty as the real thing of course, but if you want pretty you stick to Mac OS X ;)

Essential Widgets (a list)

Ah, Dashboard Widgets are certainly one of my favorite features of Mac OS X. There are many more or less useful tools disguised as widgets, so I've decided to post a list of my favorite, essential widgets that increase my productivity or just keep me company ;)

Here are the widgets I keep in my Dashboard at all times:

• Apple Logo - it's just an Apple logo that makes my Dashboard a bit more pretty ;) You can choose your favorite Apple logo color or pattern (my choice is Snow).
• Calculator - a simple calculator that comes with the OS.
• Calendar - as the name explains, it's a calendar and it comes with the OS.
• Dictionary - comes with the OS and lets you search the built-in dictionary.
• DoBeDo - a widget that shows tasks (ToDos) from iCal. It has many settings, skins, and enables editing and printing of tasks.
• Easy Currency - a currency converter with many different currencies (even Slovenian tolar). A must for me now that we'll be switching to Euros.
• iCal Events - as the name explains, this widget shows future events from iCal. A great match for DoBeDo (I even use the same skin for both widgets).
• Movie Locator - type in a movie title and Safari will open the movie's IMDB page.
• Screenshot Plus - a great widget for making screenshots without having to remember all those screenshot shortcuts of Mac OS X. You can take screenshots of the entire screen, a widget, a window or part of the screen. The widget also has a preview option.
• Stickies - an electronic version of PostIt notes that comes with the OS. One of the most useful widgets for me. Currently I have 4 different stickies on my Dashboard (each is of course of a different color).
• TheDailyGrind - a great widget to keep track of time spent on different projects.
• Weather - well... it's a weather widget :) It comes with the OS and I just love its look.
• Wikipedia - search Wikipedia on your Dashboard with this widget.

Useful widgets that I call only when I need them:

• ColourMod - a sleek widget that lets you pick a color and displays the color's values in HSV, RGB, Hex, CMYK.
• HTML Tidy Widget - this widget checks HTML code and ads missing tags or points out errors in the code.
• iChrono - a cool stopwatch.
• News Reader - an RSS reader that can display RSS feeds from multiple sources. I now use Safari as my RSS reader, but this widget is pretty cool as well.

When you need to share a list or task...

I’ve always wanted a simple and efficient way to share lists and notes online with other people and the option to access shared items anywhere (even on my mobile). And so it was that I finally found Backpack. Backpack is a great service for keeping list online and share them with other people. You can sign up at Backpack for free, though a free account has a few limitations (limited number of pages and no image sharing). Still, I found that the free account works just fine for me. I use it to keep a list of grocery shopping and a list of movies I want to see in the future - both list are shared with interested parties ;)

Also, I recently found an interesting service Monkey on Your Back that lets you send email “monkeys” that remind other people of their tasks. Unfortunately, other users can also send you reminder monkey, so watch out for monkeys on your back! ;) (A free account only lets you have 5 active monkeys at a time.)