What do I use to keep ahead of the game?

I am sharing three resources that I use daily to stay on top of my game. What game? Keeping on top of the latest tech trends and other info with minimal effort. Two of these resource are great for building your own PLN (personal learning network). I’ll let you figure which one’s I’m referring to.

1. Twitter.com - If you are on Facebook, but not on Twitter, IMHO you are really missing on some really great information. Twitter is really what you make out of it. If you are new to twitter, or never tried it before, I challenge you to try it for a month. But you have to figure out how to get the most out if it. If you need coaching, please follow me and hit me with a DM (direct message) for some guidance!

 2. Delicious.com - People usally bookmark website that are important, right. Having that said, there are many social bookmarking sites, but this one IMHO is the most resourceful (and not blocked at my school) The power of this resource is when you build your NETWORK and see what your friends, colleagues, or anyone is bookmarking. Also, it is very important in how you tag your links. Especially if you need to retrieve a website that you need but don’t remember the specific web address. If you are curious in seeing my bookmarks or even my network, just click here.

3. Popurls.com - I use this aggregator to keep up with the latest and greatest info whether it is national or tech related news.  There are other aggregators just as good as this one, but I guess I’ve used this the longest and it serves my needs.

Please comment and share any of your resources that you use to keep your head above the sea of information…

Shameless self-promotion using…

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Social Bookmarking and the Educator

Every educator needs to believe in the following cliché…” Work smart, not hard.”

Now how does social bookmarking come into play? Well, as a die-hard muxway (this name is not sexy at all!) ….no, del.icio.us…. no, I mean delicious.com user since its inception in 2003, I cannot imagine how I would capture and retrieve such great websites links over many years and many computers.

If social bookmarking and delicious is new to you, let me share with you the benefits that I am enjoying.

1. Retrieve my plethora of web favorites/bookmarks from any computer (yes, even at school! delicious.com is NOT block by my districts web filter!)

2. Find other users such as educators, and browse their nifty links; and then save them as my own!

3. Organization of websites via tags (tags is a web2.0 concept making the magic of social bookmarking to occur.)

4. Subscribe to specific tags to discover new web links

In a research paper by Gabriela Grosseck titled Using del.icio.us In Education goes more in depth on my topic. I must say that there are other online social bookmarking resources out there, however I highly recommend delicious.

Yes, I have been teased by other educators when referring them to find specific weblinks from delicious, however when they find what they need, they get past the name.