Walking on the ‘Webside’

Part One - Communication

          The ‘push’ and the ‘pull’ of it all.  Email, list servers, instant messenger, blogs, wiki, rss, chat and video conferencing all demystified.  The advantages and disadvantage of each will be explained.  You will be making your own blog and getting rss feeds.

          ‘Pull’ technology is when you go out and get something.  Searching the WWW is a perfect example of ‘pull’ technology.  ‘Push’ technology is when to information pushed out to you whether you want it or not.  Cable TV is a good example of ‘push’ technology as are advertisements on commercial websites.

          In the past, people felt that Email was a ‘pull’ technology.  You had to open Outlook or go to it via the web interface.  To access the web interface email from home, go to http://www.nashua.edu/district/default.asp  Click on Teachers & Staff, then Internal, and finally email.  In the logon box type world\yourusername.  Tab to password box and type it in. 

          Email has become a very ‘push’ form of communication in our lives with the advent of distribution lists and list servers.  Much of our professional life is now being driven by email especially by the school distribution lists.  This isn’t a bad thing but…  Keeping my inbox in reasonable shape means many times I delete items that I might really have liked to read again.  Yes, you can (in Outlook) go to ‘save as’ and save the email or attachments.  You can make your own personal distribution list by Crtl+Shift+L. 

          List servers can put even more pressure on your inbox.  What are list servers?  They are a free service that you ‘subscribe’ to and people post messages to a single address and then the email is ‘broadcasted’ to all members (can be read on ‘web’ in some cases).  The great thing about list servers is that they have archives that you can search.  THUS if you are new to a subject area, reading archives may answer your question!.  It also saves you from asking the SAME question that numerous other people have over the years.  Yahoo Groups is one of the most popular.  There are many educational list servers.  List servers are a great way to ‘network’ with others.  I have made numerous lasting professional relationships with people I have ‘met’ on list servers. 

          One way to take pressure off your Inbox is to blog not email your thoughts.  Blogging has been around since the late 1990’s.  I think of blogs as threaded conversation.  Some people use blogs as a personal on-line diary and others use their blogs to discuss political, legal, technological or educational trends.  During the last presidential election, things got hot and heavy in the blogging world.  Major news shows such as CNN started covering the blogs.  All of sudden, the word ‘blog’ has become part of the English language.  For the meaning of ‘blog’ go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog. 

          Let us go to my blog http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ClaudiaNovak  You can get your own free blog at http://www.bloglines.com/  or another option is http://spaces.msn.com/  More information on Blogs can be found at http://caxton.stockton.edu/BlogOnBlogs/  or http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog

          One of the advantages of bloglines.com over blogger.com, is that allows you to get RSS feeds.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol)  Oh goodness, another complicated acronym!  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication OR I like to think of it as a really simple solution to one of the problems of blogging.  What is one of the problems of blogging?  How do you tell when some one has updated their blog?  Some people blog daily and other weekly.  I don’t want to waste my time going to a blog that has not been updated.  SO this is where RSS comes in.  WHEN you update your blog, RSS sends out a message to all your subscribers saying that the blog has been updated.  One big problem of blogging solved. 

           On to Wikis…  Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki  Yes, I am using the most famous of all Wikis, Wikipedia for the definitions in this handout.  What are the big differences between wikis and blog???  Blogs are threaded discussions led by a head blogger.  Some blogs allow people to write in their comments such as blogger.com.  You can take a look at my ‘horse’ blog http://welshponiesandcobs.blogspot.com/  Many of the educational blogs (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/) require that you are a member to comment.  Now, let us look at wikis.  They are collaborative effort to write and share knowledge and information.  Anyone can edit anyone’s work.  This can be an issue for some so take a moment and read some of the below articles and come to YOUR philosophical opinion of the matter.

          Take a look http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/mac082504.html  NOW look at http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/000311.html and maybe you want to look at http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2004/08/31#a2253 

          Chat rooms are another difficult matter for educators to discuss as to their educational value.  Public chat rooms have safety issues which are very real.  Why?  You have NO idea who are ‘talking to’ in chat rooms.  A person  who think is another 11 or 12 year old could be 40 year old that is predator.  BUT chat rooms are part of our children’s life and safety in chat rooms should be discussed. 

          I have been involved in a couple of educator ‘chat rooms’ and it didn’t ‘work’ for me.  Sometimes I need extra time to read and digest what I am reading…  Just me and my problems from growing up in the non technology world of my youth where handwriting was more important than typing for example.

          Instant messenger and video conferencing will be discussed later in the class series.  Hopefully, we will be doing it. 

PS: So what do you think?  Should I turn this whole thing into a blog or a wiki?  Now if I got the video conferencing going, we could all be at home right now and be collaborating in the comfort of our homes…

          One the hardest thing about searching the Internet is finding what you REALLY want.  You KNOW it is out there but you are getting 3 million 450 thousands hits and the first three that you tried are 'dead' links.  This means that you need a little help with your searching techniques.  It also means you need to know something about metasearch engines (Metasearch engine) and even about search engine spiders (Web crawler) .

         An excellent set of tutorials can be found at Internet Tutorials.  There is more useful information on this website than just about anything else I have seen.  Take more than a few minutes to explore this site. 

          Picking the right search engine for the job at hand can greatly  aid you.  As a teacher or librarian, your needs are different than the general public.  Being able to search by grade level is highly important to me.  I have got very fond of http://marcopolo-education.org/home.aspx as an excellent place to find lesson plans and TRULY educational site.  Take a moment and look at http://www.marcopolosearch.org/MPSearch/Search_Help.asp which will help you with your search techniques. 

          Actually, this ‘hint’ is perhaps the most valuable one I can give you about using technology in general.  Rather than fumbling around, go to help and see if you can find the answer to your question.  This has saved me hours and hours of frustration.  You can’t KNOW everything about everything.  A few minutes spent looking through FAQ (frequently asked questions) can also be a life saver. 

          Another valuable education search engine is http://www.nettrekker.com/frontdoor/  Instructions for signing up for a Nettrekker account can be found at Nashua webpage, District Info, District Departments, Technology, Teacher Resources, and finally click on Nettrekker.  I am not as familiar with this search engine but do like the idea that it is subject arranged (like Yahoo) which can be very helpful.  Some of the nice features are Teacher Tools and the ability to save a search. 

          Now I guess we need to talk briefly about our good old friend Google. This web page by Bernie Ford is very helpful http://webquest.sdsu.edu/searching/fournets.htm   http://www.googleguide.com/ is another useful site to .  Still another useful article is http://www.regaubry.com/googlenotes.htm The tools  Google today,

           For website evaluation, Teaching Website Evaluation please take advantage of my website.  For more on website validation please look at On the Trail of Coronado Resources.

           NOW that you have all these great resources, you need a way to store them and have them available for the future.  While using your favorites in Internet explorer can be useful and can be exported but what if you are working at home and not at school and find a bunch of great sites???  Here is where Furl really shines.    LookSmart's Furl - Your Personal Web File. 

Furl Tutorial

Don't forget that you can drag and drop favorites to your links toolbar.  This is very handy for sites that you use all the time. 

RATHER than reinventing the 'wheel' please go to http://www.nashua.edu/novakc/FrontPage/frontpage.htm  for handouts.

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