Ok. I now have ping.fm on my iGoogle page. Let's see if it posts to all my sites.

I trying out ping.fm to see if it posts on my Twitter, Blogger, Plurk and Facebook accounts. If it works, it would save me time!

Plurk and Shelfari

I have been trying out Plurk for a few weeks, but was having difficulty finding friends who were not already in my email or Twitter accounts. I've finally mastered the art of finding friends, but it only seems to work if they use their real names and not an ID. Here are the steps:

• Click My friends.
• At bottom of page click Find or invite some friends.
• In the Search for other plurkers box, put the name (ID) of the person you are looking for.
• Under their name to go to their plurk timeline.
• Click on either Add ... as a friend or Follow ...as a fan. (I have to check out the difference).

On a different topic, I recently discovered that someone from the Yahoo group Learning with Computers has started a group on Shelfari. This may be a good site to talk about books for professional development.

Leaving Voice Message on a Blog

I was looking for a widget to put on this blog that would allow visitors to leave an audio message. So I asked for input from the friendly members of Learning with Computers. From their speedy replies this is what I discovered about their suggestions:
· Evoca seemed to be the best option for what I was looking for. It is now installed on this blog. I'm interested to see how well it functions.
· Odeo seemed to be more for creating podcasts and I wanted viewers to record, not listen.
· Chinswing is a cool little tools but didn't seem to be made for putting on one's own site.
· MyChingo is no longer free.
· Qlipboard didn't seem to be for a blog viewer to record on, although it looked like an interesting tool to check out some time. While searching for Qlipboard, I did find a useful blog post by Ronaldo Lima, Jr. in which he compared Qlipboard, VoiceThread and Splashcast. I liked his site and have added it to my rss feeds.

Asynchronous Voice Tools

In updating my syllabus I recently added the following free tools for my students to explore:
BigThink
www.bigthink.com
Big Think is a site where the discussion of myriad issues starts with interviews with today's leading thinks, movers and shakers. The interactive aspect is that you can continue the discussion by uploading your own views through the use of multimedia or simple text.
Chinswing
www.chinswing.com
Chinswing is a global message board where anyone can add voice messages to ongoing topical discussions. It combines features of podcasting, text forums and live voice chat to create a whole new way to talk.
Gabcast
http://gabcast.com/
Record messages using your own phone, create podcasts, post audio to your blog, host conference calls.
Mogopop
http://www.mogopop.com/
Create and share multimedia content for iPod.
Screencastomatic
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
Screencast-o-matic is a free online tool which lets you create recordings of your desktop with audio and then upload them to share or export them to Quicktime all from your browser for free.
Vaestro
www.vaestro.com
Vaestro is a free tool which allows you to create your own Vaestro Voice Channel. Each Voice channel is a self contained space where you can create topics for voice recordings.
Voicethread
http://voicethread.com
A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows asynchronous group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

Fantastic Links about Blogging

In revising the syllabus for my Fall course on using the Internet in the classroom, I looked over my del.icio.us account and found a great post by JBlack on his blog called Transitioning to Web 2.0. His post contains the most comprehensive list of links about blogging that I have seen. Here are some of the topics he provides links to :

• What is blogging?


• Blog statistics and research


• Educational Rationale for and Pedagogy of Blogging


• Student safety and Responsible Blogging


• Evaluating Blogs - rubrics

I was pleased to see that I recognize many of the authors and have them in my own blogroll, but this compilation and categorization of resources is really helpful.

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