Resource Discover & Sharing for this Forum

I Dig with Diigo for my Golden Resource Nuggets

Why should you care? Why am I telling you this?
Diigo is a powerful social bookmarking platform. This means that your bookmarks live in the cloud. You can "Jail Break" your browser bookmarks so that the process of research and discovery of new resources can become a social activity. 

But Aren't we doing this here?...Well, a bit less effectively?
The process for me goes some how like this:

• Search
• Filter
• Capture/Curate (by adding resource to your repository
• Share

These steps are a bit delusive -Specially, between Capture/Curate & share - a bit like a tube map. 

Mind The Gap!
You see the dots representing the stations may be equally spread, but the distance between two stations varies - and in our case the time & effort between capturing and sharing here may require additional effort.  I am experiencing that gargantuan gap between what I discover and writing about here!

Wouldn't it be fab if you could save time & effort in these last two steps?
Yes you can. You can "auto blog post" direct from your group (if you are collaboratively bookmarking) or from a list to your chosen blog or to here.

The Power of Diigo
if you consistently "tag" your content with keywords you can actually develop RSS feeds/Widgets that will feed that particular tag to an RSS reader or to an embed widget. You can also highlight, annotate with a floating yellow sticky note, take a screenshot, save the page for posterity if you think it is on the blink, and share all the "funked up bits" via a special link for those who are not signed up to Diigo. You don't even have to be on your PC - You can do it on the go on a tablet or smartphone! - I DON"T WORK FOR THEM! ;-) just in case...!!!

Vic - I'm not being lazy (as you have seen on Diigo). But I've got a glut!
So to  keep my mentor (Victor Dejean) abreast to the fact that I am committing time to this project, I have setup a Diigo group for this purpose. He can see how often I find stuff and can be alerted as it happens, daily or weekly. 

Next Experiment is to try and set "auto blog post" - see if it works in a multi-author blog platform - here!

Anyone interested in Diigo? - see below

What's HappenNing: intranet & private social networks

Staff Voice and ICT...
On the 15th of March, we had a Talent Management (mindset) workshop, whereby staff requested a virtual "private" space to:

• Exchange best practice
• Download & Print files related to their course
• Find teaching resources
• Host online conversations
• Check diaries
• Have contact directory
• Check whether resources were booked in or out and by whom

But they wanted it all under one roof!

The ICT Money Challenge we face as a small organization

There is no funding in large teaching contracts to improve provider capacity to increase ICT efficiency. So from day one we have had to adopt a pragmatic  "Duct Tape" approach to stitching together ICT in respond to user (teacher)  needs.

This has translated into the adoption of free and open platforms. If you can imagine the usual suspects, then we have used them: yahoo mail, gmail, google services, blogger.com, flickr, skype, dropbox,facebook, Diigo, etc., etc.

Until about two years ago we've had one part-time administrator and one senior member of staff servicing the needs of tutors who have grown from around 10 to over 20 plus. Can you imagine the exponential growth in electronic traffic? - still with no money for ICT improvements.

Adopting free tools has taught us a thing or two...about limitations

Knitting together all these free tools to serve a freelance and mobile group of teachers has given us the experience at the coal face of how none of what we have used can encompass the expressed needs of the tutors. We have looked at the usual suspects and here is a summary of what we have learned in the journey in the last week:

• Facebook Groups: Sound great, right?..Yup, you could use Facebook apps that are updated for 2013 that can elegantly handle the new working framework in which Facebook handles javascript and embed codes (to integrate services). All the <iframe> gee whiz apps promise a lot...but,  they have access to a lot of access to a plethora of what is being exchanged!...You have to check the small print.
• Google pages/groups: After asking "Papa google" or "Daddy Google" as you would say in English, I could not find anything regarding how to embed code to integrate other services.
• Ning.com Freemium said goodbye: A couple of years ago, this used to be a "build your own free social network" - but alas, there is no Freemium (with the embed code faciltiy)
• Spruz.com: A Ning competitor looked promising - even in the description, but as soon as you try to embed services via javascript & widgets, you get slammed with the notice that you need to upgrade!
• Google sites to the rescue?: The embed codes are proving to be a technical challenge. The "technical cooking" recipes didn't work for me. I had to throw in the towel after two days of trying. However, after a rest and further trawling, if what you are trying to embed has an RSS feed associated to it, it appears that this could be a way to pipe in the information into google sites. I have yet to try these "technical recipes . RSS integration (from other sites) into google sites is yet to be confirmed by me. Need to try it out.

A learners’ access to the toolbox – Pauline Hughes, 21^st March 2013.

 

I do not consider myself to be particularly “techie”, and all of the Internet skills that I have, I have learnt from attending classes at Open Door Adult Learning Centre. Of course I surf the Internet at home, using my personal computer, but mainly for holidays and insurance comparisons. Usually I find that I can get around most websites without too much problem.  I have been asked to access this toolbox, using an android-based 10” Tablet. This is a new technology to me.

 

Upon accessing the toolbox website I had expected to see pictures of “tools” to identify the different tools available. When I realised that the tools were available from web links, I quickly navigated around the toolbox website. The following are my observations:

Moving backwards and forwards from page to page is relatively easy.

All the tool links require 2 clicks to actually access the tool ?

A lot of duplication of tools within the different sections (steps)

Some of the “tool” descriptions sound wonderful, but the linked more detailed descriptions are more appropriate.

A would have expected rather more tools for the “teaching and learning” step of the journey, isn’t this the central crux of a learner’s journey?

Some of the tools have limitations, or restrictions, or cost money.

Access from the android Tablet to some of the tools proved a little awkward, especially downloading the PDF descriptors.

No right-click on the Android hindered me, but did not prevent me.

Useful tools identified, were Job Match, Go!Animate, Animoto and Google Docs.