Mashpedia – more real-time information plus…

So many ideas for taking what is out there in cyberspace and mashing them together to create something new. Mashpedia is not a search engine, nor is it wikipedia but something completely new. I found this tool thanks to a post on the excellent Free Technology for Teachers Blog.

Mashpedia aggregates data from multiple feeds from sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, Twitter, news sources, blogs, book search engines and web pages in general and then puts it all neatly together in one spot. The layout is quite clean and easy to scan through and/or read more closely. I would love to shift some of the different fields/modules around to suit my idea f importance but this is a minor matter.

The tool works best when you can clearly define what you’re looking for. This is a skill I am trying to teach our students and this tool may help me illustrate my point.

I searched for Jessica Watson and found a great deal of information. There was a lead article that provided a basic data about her, along with the most relevant videos available, a stream of current Twitter messages, latest news, images, blog posts and links.

Search Grand prix gives you a definition and you are informed it could be connected to 12 different items and then goes on to list 4 other headings with more listings under them. Assorted images and videos come up that indicated that this is a search that needs to be more specific.

A search on Iceland retrieved images from the recent stunning volcanic explosion, along with Twitter chatter that indicate renewed concern, a Wikipedia entry, various news items and blog posts. Mashpedia also offers semantic connections between the articles, in form of links.

When working with students on current issues I have been using Silobreaker (discussed in an earlier post) and IceRocket (earlier post) for real-time information but I can see that Mashpedia with it extra information also offers students and teachers an extra dimension to their search for information.

I also tried the World War II search suggested on the Free technology 4 teachers blog. Mashpedia did well at collating the more constant (and evergreen) material along with the newest additions to information on the Web. This type of search would help students find the many varied types information now available to them via the web and see the thumbnails to decide whether or not it might be useful for them.

Worth noting is that there has been a comment about some less than appropriate ads that pop up on some of the results pages but, due to our school filter, I have not seen them so this is not an issue here.

Useful Links (weekly)

• GenoPal – Color Schemes A simple tool that allows you transfer the Color Mood from picture to graphics.

• Global Voices Online “Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online attempting to shine light on places and people other media often ignore”

• DailyLit: Read books online by daily email and RSS feed DailyLit lets you read entire books in short, customized installments sent to you by email or RSS.  

• Technology is Great, but Are We Forgetting to Live? – ReadWriteWeb 

• 50 Tools and Tricks to Revolutionize Your Notetaking | Distance Learning Net  “These 50 tools and tricks will revolutionize your note-taking by introducing you to techniques and websites that let you share ideas, store your thoughts directly on a web page and more”

• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/handy-tools-for-students/ 

• Extrema-Home Page Extrema is a powerful visualization and data analysis tool that enables researchers to quickly distill their large, complex data sets into meaningful information. Its flexibility, sophistication, and power allow you to easily develop your own commands and create highly customized graphs. 

• Enhancing Child safety and online technologies Report of The Internet Safety Technical Task Force who were comissioned to consider, on an accelerated timeline, the extent to which technologies can play a role in enhancing safety for minors in these online spaces. The Task Force was a collaborative effort among leaders from Internet service providers, social network sites, academia, education, child safety and public policy advocacy organizations, and technology development.  

• Worldometers – real time world statistics Worldometers provides real time statistics up into different areas: world population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health. 

• inSuggest – website and image recommendations 

• Home What Works Well is a UK site that offers case studies of best-practise examples of strategies used to improve teaching and learning

• Icerocket blog search A search engine that is a good tool for search blog materials as well as otther digital media. Can also be used to follow trends.  

• Collagr.com – Create your own collage that you can use in your myspace.com profile or desktop wallpaper  Create your own collage that you can use in your myspace.com profile or desktop wallpaper  

• Feelimage – Image search feeling words Image search across numerous image stores

• Literacy with ICT – IMYM Tutorials Wiki / Flickr Toys and More Wiki with a lot of information on classroom ICT and class wiki tools some great ideas for digitalstorytelling 

• educational-origami » home Educational Origami is a blog and a wiki, about the integration of ICT into the classroom. Its about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching 

• Main Page – Horizon Project workspace for the Horizon Project. The New Media Consortium’s Emerging Technologies Initiative focuses on expanding the boundaries of teaching, learning and creative expression by creatively applying new tools in new contexts.

• The NYPL Picture Collection Online Search or browse “more than 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923”. Images are in public domain, but be sure to read permissions and link/attribution requirements.  

• PicLits.com – Create a PicLit A tool to create a quick poster with drag and drop photos/text  

• Download DroPic! 0.2 – DroPic! – Reduce jpeg file sizes – Softpedia  

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

Icerocket – searching blogs and other media

On Phil Bradley’s  blog I saw a post about Icerocket, a search engine with a few differences.

 The search tab options are the first difference.

1.  When you visit the site the search tab option is by default set to ‘Blogs’ rather than ‘Web’, which is the second tab. As web users are increasingly looking for news, sharing ideas, views, etc., the development of the whole social media area, this makes more and more sense.
2. They also have added a ‘Twitter‘ search option as a tab. Is this the first search engine that has done that? I’m not sure that I would use this option a lot at school but for breaking news, it would be interesting.
3. MySpace and News and images round out the tabs.
4. You can subscribe to an RSS option for searches, which is also a strength for the search engine.  

I thought that I would give it a try. I was interested to see what was picked up in a search about the Public Transport in Melbourne, especially after the problems of the last few days. It is a controversial topic at the moment.

You have the option of simple or adv. search, which offers phrase searching, domain searches, etc.

Big buzz

The search engine also has a tool that they have named ‘The Big Buzz’. This is the part I found the most interesting.  If you use this tab and run a search Icerocket returns recent (less than 1 hour) results that it plucks from all the search options (weblogs, Twitter, Video, News, and Images). All results are arranged chronologically, with options for an auto refresh of 1, 3 or 5 minutes and, of course, an RSS option.

I like the way you get a good overview of what is being written about your topic. The rss is also a great boon for keeping up-to-date with what is happening. For students who have to develop ideas/folios/media files on particular topics this would be of great value. 

Trends

There is also a trends option in the left-hand column. I like looking at statistics and numbers so I always like these options.

Although it is not the one of the more visual search engines, that I favour, I can see potential in what it offers. I will be using it on other topics when I need some guidance/help with tools, ideas, etc. that may be of use in the education field.  You have the option to download the Icerocket tool bar, follow blog trends, have a blog tracker, etc as well from the homepage. Well worth having a look and doing some searching using this tool. I like the way you get a good overview of what is being written about your topic. The rss is also a great boon for keeping up-to-date with what is happening. For students who have to develop ideas/folios/media files on particular topics this would be of great value. 

 If I was in government or working for Connex, I would certainly be watching this.

Useful Links (weekly)

• Home | Youth Voices A meeting place where students share, distribute and discuss their digital work online.

• Visual Design for Instructional Multimedia Ideas for visual design for instructional multimedia

• Neil Gaiman’s Journal The talented author of Coraline, The Graveyard Book and other great books comments on the things that interest him, and I find it interesting.

• ScreenToaster – Free online screen recorder: create screencasts, tutorials and reviews in a few clicks once you register you can use it anywhere/anytime to make screencasts / tutorials / demos. Record your screen in one click and add subtitles! Share videos on the Internet in Flash Embed them on blogs/webpages or send them by email.

• Europeana – Homepage A searchable collection of images, videos, audio, and documents from a variety of European museums, libraries, universities, and governments. Still in beta format.

• It Died A listing of what internet services and companies are no longer available (or soon will be) for our use

• Main Page – K-3D K-3D is a 3D modeling, animation, and rendering system featuring a robust, object-oriented plugin architecture, designed to scale to the needs of professional artists, and is designed to generate motion-picture-quality animation.

• quikmaps.com :: maps for the masses A very easy to use tool that gives you the ability to “draw” lines on your map between various markers. You can also write a general description on your map. Next you are given an embed code as well as a unique url address. You don’t have to register to use it. “Doodle on Google”

• Oddee.com – A Blog on Oddities: the odd, bizarre and strange things of our world! A blog that finds all things weird and wonderful .

• vloud vloud is a free audio tool for you to upload quiet mp3s, and get louder ones back

• Photojojo » The Perpetual Photo Wall Calendar A simple idea that would be a great student project, from finding/creating the images to puting them together into something they can use.

• Double-Tongued Dictionary Double-Tongued Dictionary: A growing lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, new words, and more. A good resource if studying urban language but the site does contain advertisements that woud not be suitable for most schools.

• http://mediaeducationlab.com/pdf/CodeofBestPracticesinFairUse.pdf Code of best practices in fairuse for media literacy education. Hoping to clear up the confusion over the “fair use” of digital materials in teaching and learning, a panel of university professors has developed a “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.” “The document clarifies how fair use applies to the most common situations where media-literacy educators make use of copyrighted materials in their work, and it offers guidance for instructors so they can make more informed judgments about using these materials.”

• CJOnline / The Topeka Capital-Journal – Anti-bullying plans and policies for area schools

• How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic – ReadWriteWeb Step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry, by using the top blogs in that field.

• Lesson Writer LessonWriter creates lesson plans and instructional materials for teaching English language skills from any reading passage. LessonWriter analyzes text for vocabulary, grammar and usage, pronunciation, and word roots and stems.

• Shakespeare Searched. “This search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Search results by topic, work, and character to make it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. From something as simple as identifying the speaker of a particular quote to discovering underlying thematic elements across works, Shakespeare Searched has you covered. This website is not a replacement for a copy of the text. It provides no analysis or footnotes. It is meant to supplement a traditional reading of a work.”

• Behold | Search High Quality Flickr Images A very easy way to find photographs on Flickr

• SoundJay.com – Free Sound Effects Free sound effects web site. You are allowed to use the sounds on our website free of charge and royalty free in your projects but you are NOT allowed to post the sounds on any web site for others to download, link directly to individual sound files, or sell the sounds to anyone else

• How To Behave on Twitter : Scalable Intimacy Some reasonable guidelines for using Twitter.

• 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons Project

• Master Storytellers | Video channel on TED.com Nowhere has the timeless power of narrative been more apparent than at TED: here, storytellers both professional and provisional use the personal tale to entertain, educate and inspire to action.

• opensourceresources » home 

• Yuan.CC Maps Offers a way to let you mashup a variety of sources to geotag photos.

• Responsible Text Messaging Tips | Common Sense Media Some interesting information about teens and text messaging. May be a useful resource to share with parents as it offers advice and tips

• Flyr – Flickr Geotagged Photo Search You can use this little search engine to find geotagged photos. There are great applications for geotagging in schools

• CATHOLIC GOOGLE – Catholic Search Engine powered by Google – A Catholic Search Engine powered by Google

• Tame The Web » Blog Archive » Ten Trends & Technologies for 2009 Michael Stephen’s “Welcome to the 2009” version of TTW’s annual look at the trends and technologies that I believe will impact what we do in libraries and information centers.

• Photography Assignment Generator (beta) D’arcy Norman’s contribution to the 2009/365 Flickr group. “This is a simple automated utility to generate random photographic assignments from a list of nouns, adjectives and colours.It could also be used for writing prompts.

• News | Open Source Schools

• Main Page – Teampedia This wiki is designed for a wide audience including: team leaders, trainers, teachers, managers, camp directors, counselors, and youth groups.

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