15th November 2011
New Tools.
In the first sessions of New Media in Foreign Language Education we were introduced to some
tools that might be helpful when using new media in school. These tools can be
used for personal reasons, such as information collection, planning school
lessons, creating material, or they can be used as subject itself in the actual
school lesson.
In the following I will present four pages and state my personal experience with them, e.g. usage, problems, application possibilies in school, etc. You will see that there are some tools I really like and began to use already, and other that I still need to explore.
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In the following I will present four pages and state my personal experience with them, e.g. usage, problems, application possibilies in school, etc. You will see that there are some tools I really like and began to use already, and other that I still need to explore.
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delicious.com
Source: 1
"Discover & collect the web"
Delicious.com is a web tool for social bookmarking. This web tool is really easy to handle. When you add a delicious bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, you can easily save interesting and informative links while browsing the web. In order to find these links later on, you can provide them with a tag that classifies its content. Instead of saving links individually you additionally have the possibility to compile a stack. This means that you can collect links that are built around a common theme.
The advantages of this web tool are obvious. It gives me the possibility to manage my favourite pages on one page only. Due to the tags for each saved page, I can order my links and find them later on. At the moment there are not many bookmarks on my page but I think that over the years it could develop into a useful and helpful source concerning different interesting topics and especially teaching material. Anyhow, I think I will not use this tool for research for university, because many lecturers do not approve of web sources unless they are accessible via the university network.
Delicious.com is a web tool for social bookmarking. This web tool is really easy to handle. When you add a delicious bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, you can easily save interesting and informative links while browsing the web. In order to find these links later on, you can provide them with a tag that classifies its content. Instead of saving links individually you additionally have the possibility to compile a stack. This means that you can collect links that are built around a common theme.
The advantages of this web tool are obvious. It gives me the possibility to manage my favourite pages on one page only. Due to the tags for each saved page, I can order my links and find them later on. At the moment there are not many bookmarks on my page but I think that over the years it could develop into a useful and helpful source concerning different interesting topics and especially teaching material. Anyhow, I think I will not use this tool for research for university, because many lecturers do not approve of web sources unless they are accessible via the university network.
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twitter.com
_Twitter is an online medium of social networking and microblogging. This platform enables you
to blog anything that you find interesting and want to tell the
world (e.g. your thoughts, links to other pages, comments on current
news, etc.) or you can simply follow tweets of other members.
I must confess that I am no fan of twitter. This has different reasons. Firstly, I do not like the idea that people I follow or who follow me can see all my profile information. Secondly, there is lots of unimportant or wrong information since you can post everything you like. This implicates that I have to filter out the important content, and this takes time. Thirdly, I hardly know people who use twitter, and because of that I also use other means of communication to stay in touch with them. I am aware of advantages that twitter can have for companies or persons of public interest what concerns marketing, branding etc. It could also be helpful in school in order to communicate with your pupils. Nevertheless, I prefer other sources of information and communication. Edu.pad for example would be a good alternative to communicate with your students in a more private way.
I must confess that I am no fan of twitter. This has different reasons. Firstly, I do not like the idea that people I follow or who follow me can see all my profile information. Secondly, there is lots of unimportant or wrong information since you can post everything you like. This implicates that I have to filter out the important content, and this takes time. Thirdly, I hardly know people who use twitter, and because of that I also use other means of communication to stay in touch with them. I am aware of advantages that twitter can have for companies or persons of public interest what concerns marketing, branding etc. It could also be helpful in school in order to communicate with your pupils. Nevertheless, I prefer other sources of information and communication. Edu.pad for example would be a good alternative to communicate with your students in a more private way.
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netvibes.com
_With the help of netvibes.com you
can personalise your welcome page on the web. This tool offers a range of
different widgets, which you can use to design your own dashboard. There is
also the possibility to add web feeds that provide you with news and new information
about certain topics.
At first I was a bit sceptical about this tool and confused about the operating mode. I wanted to add a specific dictionary, but it did not work. Later I found out that you can only add certain pages to your dashboard, namely those that are offered as widgets and pages that include web feeds. I think that this is a big disadvantage of this tool. Additionally, I could not see the need for such a page. This was because over the years it has become some kind of daily routine to check up the weather on wetter.de, if I do not know what to wear, to consult google, when I was searching for something, and to read the news on zeit.de, my welcome page. However, I changed my mind about the need for such a page this morning, when I discovered that there is a RSS-feed for the menu of the uni mensa, which I frequently check out. I thought to myself, that a personalised dashboard actually suits my needs and could save a lot of time, when I include all pages I would otherwise have to visit one after another. So, I just set netvibes.com as my welcome page in the hope that I will find more practical widgets or RSS-feeds that I can include. Additionally I find it very helpful that I can structure these modules in different taps. I have organised them in the categories general information, school and personal interests. In this way I know exactly where to look, when I need information of a certain category.
At first I was a bit sceptical about this tool and confused about the operating mode. I wanted to add a specific dictionary, but it did not work. Later I found out that you can only add certain pages to your dashboard, namely those that are offered as widgets and pages that include web feeds. I think that this is a big disadvantage of this tool. Additionally, I could not see the need for such a page. This was because over the years it has become some kind of daily routine to check up the weather on wetter.de, if I do not know what to wear, to consult google, when I was searching for something, and to read the news on zeit.de, my welcome page. However, I changed my mind about the need for such a page this morning, when I discovered that there is a RSS-feed for the menu of the uni mensa, which I frequently check out. I thought to myself, that a personalised dashboard actually suits my needs and could save a lot of time, when I include all pages I would otherwise have to visit one after another. So, I just set netvibes.com as my welcome page in the hope that I will find more practical widgets or RSS-feeds that I can include. Additionally I find it very helpful that I can structure these modules in different taps. I have organised them in the categories general information, school and personal interests. In this way I know exactly where to look, when I need information of a certain category.
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wordle.net
Wordle is a tool for generating "word clouds".
You can provide any text you like and wordle will produce a word cloud
that highlights the words that appear most frequently in the text. You
can easily change the font, the layout and the colour scheme of your
cloud to adapt it to your needs. Moreover there is the possibility to
delete function words or words of a certain language. The advantage of
this tool is, that you do not need to register, because you can publish
your word cloud anonymously or plainly make a screenshot and save the
word cloud as a picture. I think that this tool could be very helpful
for creative tasks in school. You could for example start a unit on
poems with the help of this tool, analyse political texts with
older pupils, or use this tool for vocabulary learning with younger
students. All in all it is a tool that is widely applicable.
abcya.com offers more or less the same service and function as wordle.net. However, with its layout and colours it is intended to address children in the grades 1 to 5. In addition to the generating of word clouds it offers computer games suitable for the certain grades. The fact that I am becoming a teacher for older pupils has lead to the decision to just cover this tool alongside. You can check it out yourself with the help of the link below.
abcya.com offers more or less the same service and function as wordle.net. However, with its layout and colours it is intended to address children in the grades 1 to 5. In addition to the generating of word clouds it offers computer games suitable for the certain grades. The fact that I am becoming a teacher for older pupils has lead to the decision to just cover this tool alongside. You can check it out yourself with the help of the link below.
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Sources: 1 http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/54508/64/delicious_icon?r=1.
2 http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/43397/70/animals_bird_birds_chat_talk_twitter_icon.
3 http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/54518/64/.
4 http://www.flickr.com/photos/rp-photographie/6634487375/in/set-72157628742269019/lightbox.
5 http://www.macnotes.de/gimages/ipad/hardware-04-20100127.jpg.
2 http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/43397/70/animals_bird_birds_chat_talk_twitter_icon.
3 http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/54518/64/.
4 http://www.flickr.com/photos/rp-photographie/6634487375/in/set-72157628742269019/lightbox.
5 http://www.macnotes.de/gimages/ipad/hardware-04-20100127.jpg.