Updating+Our+Computers

New, Easy Tools for Power-Reading, Writing, Connecting, and Producing
The tools here are dead easy, all free, and pretty much all we'll look at this semester to familiarize ourselves with the "read-write web"--one by one. [|Firefox] -- there is a reason people have left Internet Explorer for Firefox: more power to browse, surf, interpret, search, and manage information. Check out the "Recommended Add-ons" page for always expanding little tools with huge powers for us and our students. Download them for free and try them out. It's like Christmas shopping. But free. If you're not seriously astonished at the increased efficiency and power Firefox adds to your online life, ask me for tips. The above should be enough. And watch the video tutorials for a quick, simple intro to the basics. [|Diigo] -- amazing. On online bookmarking program that allows you to bookmark, label, file, //highlight, and annotate websites.// Research will never be as hard again. I have 1400 websites bookmarked on my Diigo account, all filed under multiple, one-click tabs. Sign up, watch the quick, simple video tutorials, and you'll be comfy with it (but infinitely more powerful as a researcher) in no time. My ninth graders picked it up within 20 minutes, and now swear by it. [|Bloglines] -- newspapers of the 21st c. But YOU dictate the content. Content refreshes every hour--an "infinite book"--and is always open to whatever changes in reading interests happen in your literacy life. [|Blogger] -- you'll see--it's the Google-owned blogging platform I use for [|Beyond School]. But don't sign students up on this (at least on their own blogs)--security and privacy issues to discuss first! I //will// be setting up a cadre blog for us tonight, though, so you can test drive--and we can connect with the edublogging community together. We'll meet others like us that way, and make new connections, and learn from them, and probably end up collaborating with them. [|Classblogmeister] -- good blog host for ES and MS. Teacher-controlled privacy protection settings. But it's a bit boring, style-wise. [|Learnerblogs] -- what I'm using in HS. It's having problems staying online lately--maybe because of the earthquake in Taiwan over the Winter Break, which knocked out four of the eight trans-Pacific lines in the WWW. Repairs are slated for completion only in mid-February. Aaargh. Otherwise I like Learnerblogs. [|wikispaces] -- free for teachers for a limited time. Get them while they last! (This wiki we're using is a Wikispaces wiki.) del.icio.us -- Online bookmarking and tagging, like Diigo. More popular, but less powerful. Diigo auto-updates del.icio.us, so no real conflicts there.