Sharing sites with Weblist

I am always looking for tools that add to the classroom experience. Over the last 2 weeks I have been investigating Weblist. It is a aggregator that allows you to create a “library” of websites in a visual mode.

You can then share this list with colleagues and students by sending them to a single web address. I like the “clean” feel to the site and the ease with which you can add your links and edit it as well. It is easy to paste in web addresses individually or you can use the multiple sites option. You can also add a title, description and tags here, the last two being optional

The user can click on the thumbnail to open the site. You open onto a single-page view of the site.

Once on one of the sites you can use the navigation bar at the top of the page to continue to look through the pages, hover over the name to see the complete list or use the button to return to the thumbnail view. You can also add to the list via a button here .

It is a useful tool to keep your students at the sites you deem reputable/accurate because they remain always in the Weblist URL.

If the students want to cite the pages in an assignment the can use the button at the bottom of the page to bring up a list that include the sites email address and basic info. Here you can see the information when you put in the title, a description as well as see the address.

I was showing a science teacher I was working on – a list I called Chemical Elements WFC -  and she became very interested by the options for her students. I have given her the edit address to add a few more sites although we believe that too many sites could be confusing for her year 8 students. I have been thinking that maybe 10-12 sites as a maximum.

We then started discussing the idea that the students could create a Weblist as a class and recommend sites (as well as evaluate them) as a class exercise. This would be used for other classes studying the topic.  Many of our boys love the idea of creating a “real” project that will be used by others.

Weblist is a free service and registration is optional. If you choose to register as a user your entire list will be saved under your account and you will be able to edit, delete and add to your lists.

You have the option to have a look at other lists but not all of them are for school use. Two lists that I like were Biomes and  Rainforests.

Last year I wrote a post about sharetabs which is a similar tool. I still use sharetabs but I believe that as I investigate Weblist further it might offer extra option for our students.

Since I began this I have found an article on the School Library Journal by Joyce Valenza Ph.D. She has been playing around with the tool as well and he first list was on Copyright-Friendly Images.

A visual dictionary called Shahi

Shahi is another amazing tool that uses Flickr images (although you also have the option of choosing from Google or Yahoo). I found out about it from a shared bookmark, by shared by Carla Arena, in one of the Diigo groups I belong to.

What a great idea it is to combine the definition/s of a word with images pulled from Flickr. Shahi is so simple to use and the multiple images that accompany the definitions are really interesting and often very emotive.

You can go beyond simply using it to help students understand the definitions of a word, I can see Shahi being used to help with ideas for creative creative writing purposes. Typing in the words “love” and “sorrow” bring up the following images.

Love

sorrow

The images for the concepts of love and sorrow are interesting and could be discussed by students who could then try to find their own images to represent a feeling.

When you click on an image you like, an enlarged version pops-up. You can then follow it back, to the person responsible for that photo, to see what else they may have to offer. However also be aware that the images are not censored and the whole Flickr library is available.

Geometry of Death II

Note: The Google option gives you images from google pages and you can find documents, with the tag you used, linked to the image.

Real-time statistics – Worldometers

Today I have been preparing for the start of our school year next week. I have been going through files and clearing out old data files, reading and commenting on blogs that I have neglected reading over the last 6-7 weeks.

I made quite a mess and filled up the bins. I still have a lot more files to go through but still it was a start. It was interesting looking at some of the information that was once used often but is now out of date or has been superseded. In fact, as we all know,  the information available to us is growing amazingly fast.

This leads me mention to an interesting little tool called Worldometers, world statistics updated in real time. Have a look and see the birth and death rates click over regularly.

The site divides the statistics up into different areas: world population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.

The watching the information change, sometimes so fast it is only a blur, makes you  very aware of the global picture. You can easily find the sources for the information, and the links are available for anyone to follow up the information. 

Worldometers is part of the Real Time Statistics Project, which is managed by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers with the goal of making world statistics available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world.
Sources are carefully selected to include only data published by the most reputable organizations and statistical offices in the world.
The counters that display the real-time numbers are based on Worldometers’ algorithm that processes the latest and most accurate statistical data available together with its estimated progression to compute the current millisecond number to be displayed on each counter based on the specific time set on each visitor’s computer clock.

I like the idea of providing out students with world statistics, available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format, and having them realise that Australia is part of a very large and diverse world.

Free social networking icon set for Bloggers

Just for a change of pace, here is a set of free, non-standard icons, for non-commercial use by bloggers, designed by those at Templates.com.

This is a lovely (and free) icon set of the most popular social websites. They are placed “in a bottle” for bloggers and consist of 10 icons:

•  del.icio.us, DesignFloat.com, Digg.com, Facebook.com, Ma.gnolia.com, Reddit.com, RSS, StumbleUpon.com, Technorati.com, Twitter.com
• Each icon is produced in the following sizes: 80х80, 64х64, 32х32.

You can learn more about the creation process of this Icon set on the Templates.com blog.

An image is worth 1000 words

Microblogging paints a picture,
originally uploaded by shareski.

I always like to use images to help describe something, be it in a lesson or on my blog, or whatever. I was looking at a post, 25-ways-to-spice-up-your-blog-post-photos, on a site called Pro Blog Design. This discussed how to make images more striking and therefore enhance a blog. There were a number of tutorials on how to use Photoshop to make a photograph more dynamic. The tutorials are really easy to follow and worth a look.

This reminded me to go and have a look at Dean Shareski’s Flickr photo set (interesting quotes) and found that he has added to the collection. This one is “Microblogging paints a picture”. There are a number of others, some of which I have used before.