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During the summer of 2008 I began work on my thesis. At this time, the working title was, “How are educators using the ‘social web’ to enhance teaching and learning, and their own professional development?” I started to develop a three-year, longitudinal study, entitled edonis (educators online impact study); setting out to have 100 participants by time of commencement at the start of November. The research would consist primarily of: fortnightly emailed questions; monthly online surveys via Survey Monkey; quarterly invited response to some stimulus; yearly extended discussion (online or face-to-face); and a face-to-face or online recorded interview.

Diigo - 21st Century Tool for Research, Reading and CollaborationBy Peggy Steffens 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. If you are unfamiliar with social bookmarking, let me explain.  When you sit at a computer, you can find a web site you really like and bookmark it or add it to your favorites so you can go back to it in the future.  The problem with bookmarking on a computer is that in order to get back to that bookmark, you have to be on THAT SPECIFIC computer.  If you bookmarked the site at school, when you go home it doesn’t appear on your list.  If you bookmark it on one computer in the lab, you must bookmark it on every computer in the lab in order to have access to it.  So, 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.   

Impact of Technology on the 2008 Election By Peggy Steffens  The Pew Internet and American Life project recently conducted a survey about the impact of technological tools on the 2008 election.  The research showed that 46% of Americans have used the Internet, e-mail or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.

Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.

Chuck Frey has done some survey research on how 149 people use online mind mapping tools. In particular people think: Collaboration is cool Some online tools don't offer the functionality of the offline ones Security is a concern When I got an email from Chuck about this I actually thought I would see a comparison of the tools.  So...