Friday, November 28, 2008

17 Ways to Get Free Books | Frugal Panda

      • 17 Ways to Get Free Books

        You can never have too many books, so we are delighted to share with you some ways to get them for free. From children’s books to technical books, there are numerous resources that offer literature for free. Some of the following sites offer actual printed books, while others feature electronic books (aka “ebooks”). Please bear in mind that the list is alphabetized, not ordered by importance.

        1. Bibliomania - Bibliomania is a simple and fast-loading site that offers over 2000 classic books, short stories, plays and poems online. From Mark Twain to William Shakespeare, some of the world’s greatest writers are included on the site. All you have to do is browse the site’s genre sections or search for a specific text, then you are presented with it directly on the site’s page. Users can seamlessly stroll through each page with this site, as it isn’t bogged down with flashy graphics.
        2. Bibliomania is an invaluable tool for book lovers, as well as students and teachers. Teachers for the classroom could print off excerpts from classic texts. Also, study guides are available on the site, should you need to cram for a big test. Should you wish to purchase a physical copy of a featured text, you can be directed to a store where you will can order the text online with a credit card.

    I love free books.  What's not to love?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Daddy, Where's Your Phone? - O'Reilly Radar

  • tags: mobilelearning, digital_natives, educational_leadership

    • "But I plead guilty to Kamla's charge: I think about the web as experienced on a PC, and then about mobile as an add on. The tipping point has come; that notion has to flip: if we're trying to get ahead of the curve, we need to think first about the phone, and then think about the PC browser experience as the add-on."
      Because I work in a computer lab classroom (I am indeed a lucky dude to have such a teaching assistant) I do not tend to notice this until I see a student texting in the back of the classroom. For him the computer keyboard within arm's reach is nowhere near as compelling as the one in his hand. I feel like I am standing on stone in the middle of the creek as the rain pelts down and it has just occurred to me that I can't stay where I am for long. Swim, rat, swim!

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Blog Post: Daddy, Where's Your Phone? - O'Reilly Radar http://s3nt.com/ap9z

Tellio's InterWeb Notes 11/26/2008 (p.m.)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (continue reading &aquo;)
Blog Post: Tellio's InterWeb Notes 11/26/2008 (p.m.) http://s3nt.com/ap9s

Twitter Updates for 2008-11-25


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Blog Post: Twitter Updates for 2008-11-25 http://s3nt.com/ap6g

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Blog Post: Tellio's InterWeb Notes 11/26/2008 (a.m.) http://s3nt.com/apzh

Using Diigo to Improve Blog Workflow

This is a demonstration of the power of diigo as a research and info gathering system. All of what you see below is a nearly automatic result of using diigo to bookmark, annotate, and highlight web content. I use diigo to find content, to highlight, to annotate, and to post via integrated blog tools included in diigo. I now have an edit of my previous post which is now less raw commentary on Jeffrey Young's excelent chronicle article with some links and slideshow added. My next posts will pull out a few relevant and interesting items and then elaborate a bit on them.
  • tags: futureversity, singularity, x-prize

    • Singularity University
      • How far are we going to allow computers to advise us? Perhaps they would make better learning brokers or at least be better in bringing the multiplicity of the net and aggregat it into a "program of study".
    • Interdisciplinary, Intercultural and International:
    • How would thinking machines reshape campus life?

      • This is the meat of the article. I want to know how this singularity university affects me. Will I be out of a job? Will it make my job easier, faster, better? Where will I need to go to accomodate? Do I need to check out of higher ed and move into another form of ed? Worldwide effects?

    • "I'm one or two orders of magnitude more productive today because of the global knowledge system the Internet has enabled."
      • I would have to agree with this. Google as second brain (some seem to think that it is their only brain) is a metaphor I use with my students in class all the time. I can only imagine the connectivity online search represents to get tighter and more profound at the same time just as it already has.
    • "Perhaps we'll soon have machines recording everything we say, see, and hear, allowing us to retrieve experiences we now lose to forgetfulness."
      • Reminds me of Kevin Kelly's website, The Quantified Self--Good info is inevitably customized to small "t" truths that make your life meaningful.
    • Computerized research assistants
      • What kind of topology is being suggested here? Would these research assistants be experts on top or on tap? As it exists now humans are still at the hub of any system, but perhaps we need to move to a heliocentric system where the research bots are at the center and we orbit them. Personally, I prefer a jungle ecology system, a learning society of mind like MInsky writes about.
      • They already exist--google alerts for example. What we need are researchbots--oops they already exist, too.
    • "The whole fabric..."
      • Interesting metaphor, our strength derives from the interlocking thread elements.
    • "Let's face it, the human brain isn't getting any zippier."
      • What a great motto or signature or bumper sticker! I certainly wish I could tag this comment.
    • "These new computer teachers will have more patience than any human lecturer, and they will be able to offer every student individual attention— which sure beats a 500-person lecture course."
      • All hail the Comptutor! This frees up teachers to do.....? Creative work. Designing even wiser and better comptutors?
    • "Virtual professors probably won't ask for tenure. And Mr. Goertzel sees them as key to expanding educational opportunities, by greatly reducing the price of a high-quality education."
    • "For example, if the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could aid terrorists or repressive dictators."
      • I could see an educational panopticon with the ultimate evil high school counselor sitting like a giant hypnotoad in the center of it all directing us toward the greater good.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (continue reading &aquo;)
Blog Post: Using Diigo to Improve Blog Workflow http://s3nt.com/app8
Blog Post: Will Electric Professors Dream of Virtual Tenure? - Chronicle.com http://s3nt.com/appp

Instructional Design Template

http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/5491104/1oz71i4k0t9f44xacbfn

 


Here is the scribd version of a design doc I found online.
Instructional Design Template Page 1

Best Practices in Diigo

http://www.amphi.com/~technology/techtalks/online/nov08/bestpract.htm

 

Here are the annotations associated with this page:

Best Practices

  • The proliferation of Web 2.0 tools on the web offers numerous ways of collaborating with students and colleagues.  One of the most exciting and valuable tools I have seen recently is Diigo, especially with the introduction of Diigo for Educator accounts. 
  • Diigo is a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious but with more features that are beneficial for the classroom.
  • The first great thing about Diigo is that your bookmarks follow you wherever you go.  When you bookmark a site using your Diigo account, you can have access to it at work, home, the computer lab or library.  The other great thing is that once you bookmark it, you can share your book mark links with students and colleagues and they can all have access to your sites.   
    • This would be the first reason to use Diigo in the classroom comment by Amy Cordova
  • The next big plus to Diigo is that you get to “tag” the sites you want to bookmark.  A tag is the classification system you determine so you can organize your bookmarks and find the link the next time you need it; this is known as a folksonomy. 
  •  The great thing is that you can share your Diigo bookmark list with your students, and they can click on the Greek Mythology tag and see all of the resource for the unit.  But, now let’s get to the “social” part of social bookmarking.  Let’s say you find a really awesome site for your unit on Greek Mythology, and you tag it on Diigo.  You see when you look at your bookmark list that 72 other people have tagged that exact same site.  You can see the lists of the other people who have tagged that site, and you might discover a 6th grade teacher in Wisconsin who has an amazing list of Greek mythology sites that you didn’t even know about.  Now you have taken advantage of the social part of the bookmarking process by adding some of those bookmarks to your list. 
  • One of my favorite features of Diigo and what separates it apart from Delicious for me is the ability to highlight and add sticky notes.  That’s right, I can highlight the key parts of a web page or article and add sticky notes. Every time I come back to that page, when I am logged into Diigo, I will see my highlights and sticky notes. One of the goals as educators is that we must help students learn to read effectively on the web and give them the tools to be successful. Diigo is one of those tools. 
  • We know that many students do not know how to highlight effectively.  Many students highlight everything.  We can teach them strategies how to selectively highlight by modeling aloud how we read a paragraph and select the key words and phrases to highlight.  We can have them use the sticky notes to list main ideas, details, and key points they want to remember.  Students could then be given a passage or article to practice with and then share what they have highlighted with a partner using the Diigo sharing capability and discuss why they highlighted certain parts and made certain notes.   
  • On the sticky note the teacher could ask questions and Diigo allows people to comment and reply to the questions on the sticky note.  Students could also add sticky notes for other students to comment on as well.  Another way to use the highlighting tool is that students could go through an article and highlight all of the vocabulary that they didn’t know and learn what it means prior to reading the article.  Or students could put sticky notes about questions they have when reading the text. 
  • I heard about a teacher who is planning to use Diigo to have students use the highlight and sticky note comments to peer edit student writing done in Google Docs.   
  • One of the best things about the educator accounts is that you can create the student accounts, and students do not need to provide an e-mail address.  Another nice feature in Diigo is that you can upload an Excel spreadsheet in .csv format with student names, usernames and passwords, and the accounts are created in an instant. 
  • Diigo provides a 21st century collaborative learning tool that students can use to process, organize, analyze, evaluate and share information.  Try it out with your students today.
Now you can take the highlighting and summarize it or quote it  or annotate.  I would love to be able to tag my sticky notes. 

Twitter Updates for 2008-11-24


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Blog Post: Twitter Updates for 2008-11-24 http://s3nt.com/apga

Monday, November 24, 2008

Twitter Updates for 2008-11-23


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Blog Post: Twitter Updates for 2008-11-23 http://s3nt.com/aoo2

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Blog Post: Zotero Group at Diigo 11/24/2008 http://s3nt.com/aoev

Zotero Group at Diigo 11/24/2008


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (continue reading &aquo;)

Tellio's InterWeb Notes 11/24/2008


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (continue reading &aquo;)
Blog Post: Tellio's InterWeb Notes 11/24/2008 http://s3nt.com/aoet

Scary

The Future? (continue reading &aquo;)
Blog Post: Scary http://s3nt.com/an27
Blog Post: Public Intellectual 2.0 - ChronicleReview.com http://s3nt.com/an1d

Public Intellectual 2.0 - ChronicleReview.com

The Chronicle, no less, comes out with a qualified alright-y for blogs as a vehicle for public intellectuals, but you may not that there are no comments available. Sigh. They still don't get the larger affordances of blogging, its openness. The Chronicle in many ways is still a closed silo, run by the elite for the elite. Long live the public intellectual life of the folk.

There are, of course, limits to the ways in which blogs aid public intellectuals. It is not clear how many academics will choose to embrace the technology. The academic politics of blogging can also be problematic, particularly for younger scholars focused on tenure. Another emerging problem is that professionalization is creeping into the blogosphere. Popular bloggers are also increasingly paid bloggers — and the emergence of what Irving Howe called a "phalanx of solidarity" among prominent bloggers might retard public debate.
Public Intellectual 2.0 - ChronicleReview.com

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Twitter Updates for 2008-11-22


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Blog Post: Twitter Updates for 2008-11-22 http://s3nt.com/anyv