Google recently announced Google Buzz, a new microblogging tool integrated within Gmail designed for starting conversations about the things you find interesting. Here’s a quick video introduction to Google Buzz:

It will be interesting to see how Google Buzz can be leveraged for learning opportunities. Since Google Buzz is integrated in Gmail, you won’t have to create a new account or password to use it. This should make Buzz easily accessible to students and teachers that are using Gmail but yet at the same time will isolate users who don’t or choose not to have a Gmail account.

What are your thoughts about Google Buzz? Might you consider trying it either Buzz in your classroom?

I just found Diigo Educator Accounts, which are special premium accounts provided specifically to K-12 & higher-ed educators. Once your Diigo Educator application is approved, your account will be upgraded to have these additional features:

• You can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
• Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
• Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
• Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.

Learn more >>

I’ve personally applied for my own educator account upgrade and I encourage anyone else with a Diigo account to do the same. In doing so, you’ll be able to continue to use your Diigo account that you’ve already setup but you’ll have additional teacher-only features that may be even more helpful to you and your students as you use Diigo in your teaching.

You can find me on Diigo at diigo.com/user/jrhode

Google Wave is a

…web-based application that represents a rethinking of electronic communication. Users create online spaces called “waves,” which include multiple discrete messages and components that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which rather than sending separate copies of multiple messages to different people, the content resides in a single space. Wave offers a compelling platform for personal learning environments because it provides a single location for collecting information from diverse sources while accommodating a variety of formats, and it makes interactive coursework a possibility for nontechnical students. Wave challenges us to reevaluate how communication is done, stored, and shared between two or more people (7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave).

Google Wave is currently only available in a limited preview but I’ve been fortunate to receive access. I’m personally using Wave to design a new online social networking course that I am working on developing for the Illinois Online Network and am finding the tool to have a lot of potential! More about that project in another post.

I have received a few invites that I can give out to others who would like to try to Google Wave. If you’d be interested in giving Google Wave a try, please leave a comment here with the email address you’d like to have the invite sent to and if I still have an invite available, I’ll send one your way!

From time to time I’m asked what books I recommend for someone interested in learning more about Web design. For those interested in a bit more step-by-step guidance with the basics of Web design, here are two books that I have in my personal library and I highly recommend.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to (X)HTML, Style Sheets, and Web Graphics (3rd ed.). ISBN 10: 0-596-52752-7

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards — (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets — formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web — hosting, domain names, and FTP

Learning Web Design starts from the beginning — defining how the Web and web pages work — and builds from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you’ll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you’re up to speed with key concepts. If you’re interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

• Read the complete Table of Contents
• Buy it at O’Reilly.com

The Non-Designer’s Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site (3rd ed.). ISBN: 0-321-30337-7

If you think web design is beyond your reach, or if you want your existing web site to look more professional, this thoroughly updated classic is the place to turn! In these pages, best-selling authors Robin Williams and John Tollett share the creative ideas, useful techniques, and basic design principles that are essential to great Web design-all in the context of the most current technology, software, and standards. Throughout, the authors’ aim is to inspire you and spark your creativity rather than sedate you with pages and pages of code. To that end, you’ll find loads of real-world examples, interesting illustrations, and the simple instructions you need to implement the techniques and concepts described in these pages.

• Read sample chapter, "What are Web pages anyway?"
• But it a Peachpit.com

Blogs have become common tools for communicating and collaborating online. While setting up a blog takes only a matter of minutes, effectively incorporating blogs into online teaching requires purposeful planning and structuring of activities to leverage the power that blogging brings to the learning environment. This presentation I gave at the 2009 SLATE Conference shared the experiences of incorporating instructor and student blogs into an online course as well as practical recommendations for those considering utilizing blogs in online learning. Sample instructor and student blogs as well as activities designed specifically for blogs were reviewed.

In addition to recording the session using a FlipVideo camera and sharing via Vimeo as well as a podcast in iTunes, I also experimented with live streaming the session using Twitcam. My colleague, Stephanie Richter, moderated the live stream / Twitter comments. The interactive online handout contains all the links, screen shots, and examples that I shared and/or referenced. Enjoy!

Cite this presentation as:

Rhode, J. F., & Richter, S. L. (2009, Oct. 16). Blogger beware: Teaching with blogs best practices. Presented at the 2009 SLATE Conference, Chicago, IL

“An April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows that 56% of adult Americans have accessed the Internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39% of adults have done this.”

“The report also finds rising levels of Americans using the internet on a mobile handset. One-third of Americans (32%) have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the Internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. This level of mobile internet is up by one-third since December 2007, when 24% of Americans had ever used the internet on a mobile device. On the typical day, nearly one-fifth (19%) of Americans use the Internet on a mobile device, up substantially from the 11% level recorded in December 2007. That’s a growth of 73% in the 16 month interval between surveys.” . . .

Wireless internet access using other devices, though much less common than with laptops or handhelds, has a foothold among some Americans. The April 2009 survey found that:

• 45% of adults have iPods or MP3 players and 5% of all adults have used such a device to go online.
• 41% of adults have game consoles and 9% of adults have used it to access the Internet.
• 14% of adults have a personal digital assistant (PDA), and 7% of adults have used it for online access.
• 2% of adults have an e-book (i.e., a Kindle or Sony reader) and 1% of adults have used it to get online.

The complete study is available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/12-Wireless-Internet-Use.aspx

What opportunities does an increased access to the Internet on mobile devices afford teaching and learning in higher education? Leave a comment with your ideas!

While RSS is nearly ubiquitous across the Web today, many people unfortunately are still unfamiliar with how feed readers can save time and be used to stay updated on news from favorite sites. For those who aren’t ready to use a feed reader, they can still reap the benefits of having news from RSS-enabled sites delivered to them via email using a free service like FeedMyInbox.

FeedMyInbox is a very simple service that attempts to bridge the gap between feeds (RSS, XML, Atom) and email. Click here to read more how it works.

I’ve signed my 87 year old grandma up to receive updates from our family blog to her email address using FeedMyInbox. For anyone who isn’t yet ready to make the jump to an RSS reader, give FeedMyInbox a try.

Have you found another RSS to email tool that you recommend? Leave a comment with your suggestion!

Google Docs includes a very easy-to-use forms tool that can be used for simple online surveys or other basic data collection activities. Here’s a quick introduction to using forms in Google Docs:

How might use of the data collection features of the Forms tool in Google Docs be helpful in an education context? Beyond online surveys, what other applications come to mind? When would you not want to use a Google Form? Leave a comment with your ideas!

One of the foremost concerns of online instructors is that teaching online requires more time than the traditional face-to-face classroom setting. The Strategies for Managing the Online Workload (SMOW) video podcast offers a collection of short descriptions, tips, techniques, and methods developed and used by experienced online educators to manage their time more effectively in the online teaching environment. *Note – The free iTunes software is required in order to download and view the video podcast episodes.

Here’s a video introduction to the podcast by Larry Regan, Director of Instructional Design and Development, Penn State University World Campus:

Additional contributions to this collection are welcomed. If you have an idea of how to save time when teaching online, contact Larry Ragan at Penn State University at lcr1@psu.edu for additional information on how to add your idea to this collection.

Here’s yet another simple and powerful video from CommonCraft. This one explains podcasting in plain english. If you’re not sure what a podcast is, take the 3 minutes to watch this video and then start enjoying podcasts.

In response to the recent tragedy at NIU, my department is compiling information and resources for faculty at http://www.niu.edu/facdev/resources/crisis as the campus community begins the healing process. This page will be frequently updated in the days ahead to provide links to resources and details on special programs to be offered for NIU faculty.

In addition, our center has just launched a new blog that will also be using to help communicate information and updates to faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants in the days ahead. The new NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center Blog is at http://facdev3.niu.edu/blog

If you take digital pictures, you need to watch this 3 minute video that explains the value of posting photos on a service like Flickr for sharing or safe keeping.

You can visit my personal online album at Flickr here.

Get your own…

Thanks to postings from Veronica Belmont and TUAW, I stumbled across a great plugin for Wordpress called iWPhone that optimizes a Wordpress blog for viewing on the iPhone or iPod Touch. I’ve installed this plugin on my blog, but since I don’t yet have an iPhone myself, I’ve not been able to see yet first-hand how the blog displays on either an iPhone or iPod touch. My next trip to an Apple store however, I’ll definitely be giving this a try!

For those of you who do happen to have an iPhone, I’d love it if you could try accessing this blog with your iPhone and drop me a comment with your feedback on how the blog displays for you. Even better yet, if you are able to somehow grab a screen capture and can send that my way, that’d be even better!

I’m hoping there’s an iPhone in my future…if AT&T would only expand it’s network so that usage wasn’t so limited or if they would allow Apple to open up VoIP on the iPhone so that calls could be made over WiFi, that would be enough to put me over the edge to becoming an iPhone convert.

Along the lines of optimizing Web content for iPhone, I also just came across a great piece free software for Mac OS X called iPhoney that allows for a Web developer to preview a website how it will be rendered on an iPhone. I’ve tried this out and it works really well. However, the software doesn’t recognize the mimic the browser type for iPhone-specific CSS, so I wasn’t able to use the app to test my blog optimizations. Again, I hope someone out there who is privileged to have an iPhone can get in touch.

Dick Gruber and I are excited to be launching a new children's ministry podcast that we are calling "Children's Ministry Talk." While still very much still in the formative stages, this podcast will be talkshow style in which we look forward to providing encouragement for children's ministry leaders, by children's ministry leaders, on all things children's ministry.

So…how exactly will we accomplish this goal?  Well…we really want this podcast to be very much listener-driven and reallly be interactive. We want those who minister to children around the globe to contact us with questions or comments on anything related to children's ministry. Also, we'd love any suggestions that you'd have for the "ultimate children's ministry podcast."

There are lots of convenient ways for you to contact us, all of which are posted at the site that will accompany the podcast at childrensministrytalk.com.  I'll refrain from posting our email address, phone number, and even del.icio.us tag in this posting, but you can find all of that over at childrensministrytalk.com. There's an RSS feed for the blog there as well as links to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or to subscribe to the blog so that you don't miss a single episode!

We plan to regularly have guests join us on-air to discuss various children's ministry topics. Who knows…maybe you'll have opportunity to join us on the air!  More details are sure to come as we continue fleshing things out. 

But, in the meantime, we want to hear from you!  Specifically, what questions do you have that you'd like us to talk about?  Is there a topic that has been addressed in a children’s ministry course, seminar, or conference that you'd like us to expand upon?  Or, is there a situation that you are facing in your children's ministry that you'd like some advice on how to address?  You name it…we want to hear from you on it.  We look forward to hearing from you, either via email, phone, etc.  Let your voice be heard and get in touch!