Group items tagged

So why use a blog? I suggested at the beginning of this post that a blog is basically a publishing platform. As I have been preparing it I have become more aware of the variety of ways in which I have used them, and I am also aware that there are many facilities offered by blog platforms, commonly used by others, that I have not even tried using yet. So let’s rephrase the question: Why use a publishing platform? Why use a platform that can enable you to write what you like, when you like, how you like, to whom you like? That you can edit and re-edit at will, as often as you like? That you can use to publish to a select group or to the whole world?  Where you can display your own or others’ text, documents, images, audioclips, videos, slideshows, charts, maps and Google Street View tours? That you can link from to anything on the big wide web? That you can organise and style in a variety of ways? That you can tag so that others can find it? That others can post comments to? That your students can use in as many or as few of these ways as you, or they, see fit? Or your Granny, likewise? Why, indeed?

Managing resources is one of the most important skills for students (people!) to master. I started blogging in 2000 and have spent a significant amount of time trying to devise an information management system that I can use to make sense of a topic or discipline. I've attached an image below that highlights the process and tools that I use.

This system has a few weaknesses

1. It fails to account for trend development and dissipation

Browsing the web frequently inspires people to write something to their blogs, either simply to quote, or to quote and comment. This process is now made extremely smooth and effortless with Diigo's annotation features and "Send to Blog" -- another unique blog-integration feature exclusive to Diigo!

simply highlight and add sticky notes

higher education’s relationship with wikis — Web sites that allow users to collectively create and edit content — has been somewhat hot-and-cold

tolerance, even appreciation, of Wikipedia as a useful starting point for research

using wikis to pool human knowledge of various topics into single, authoritative accounts falls into the “not” category

2. Hide Your Buzz Contact List from Prying Eyes

This isn't all that different from FriendFeed expect for one important fact: on FriendFeed you picked and chose who your friends were, but your Buzz contacts are added for you automatically based on who you email the most. If that's not information you want to share, here's how to turn it off:

Sign into your Google account via Gmail (or any other Google service) Go to your Google profile here: http://google.com/profiles/me Click the link at the top-right of the screen that reads "Edit Profile" Here, you'll see a checkbox that reads "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." To make this info private, just uncheck that box. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save changes" button

a concordance as presented by a word cloud gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text

word clouds to find unexpected language

a suggestion for beginning writers that uses this program. Wordle your work-in-progress, then look at it. Is it what you expected? Are the names of some characters HUGE, when in fact you didn't think they got that much time on the page? Do you use fiction's "meaningless words" too often: apparently, very, or really? Or perhaps some good news... a theme of your book appears to you, written but unnoticed until now. It's suprisingly cool how much this reveals about your use of language.