This incredible post by Beth Kanter is a must read for anyone in IT or working with web 2.0 and professional development. Understanding the intrisic value of a newcomer is so important for anyone working in these feels. Newcomers have more power now than they could ever imagine.
Newcomers, speak out and give your opinion. The power is in your newness and guess what, if you wait till you're an "expert" then you're just like all the other experts out there.
Also, it is better to be a newcomer than a latecomer!
the 31 day comment challenge is a program to promote effective, meaningful comments run by several amazing edubloggers -- this is an example of something that those interested in facilitating effective communications should discuss and participate in.
I've been spending some time on the various microblogging places and really don't have time to go to all of them, so now, I've used pingfm to update them all. (There is a place to go to get the most recent invite beta code, that will be my next link.) This great tutorial got me started on pingfm so that it will update all of the services I use. Very nice tutorial.
Microsoft Office Live - free site for online extension to microsoft. Office Live Small business gives you a free website and other things to manage your business.
Microsoft Office live is an online extension of Microsoft Office. I'm going to test this so that I can compare to other services. My students told me today, "If you have us test and compare and contrast, you should at least look at this as well." OK, I'm going in.
If you have Word on site it could be a place to collaborate with those who want a familiar environment. I'll let you know!
(Oh, and this also links to Office Live Small Business to create professional websites and manage your business. Interesting.
Microsoft Popfly lets you make mashups and build web pages without knowing code. I am to the point I don't teach the detailed web site creation coding I used to. I teach RSS, embedding, creating wikis, uploading media of all kinds, but I just don't know how important coding is any more at the basic level.
I want to spend some time tinkering with this.
Cool little page that helps add techorati tags to one's blog. I may have to use this until the firefox 3 plug in is fixed.
Just type in the words, generate the code and copy it to the bottom of your blog.