Month: March 2010

How To Bookmark Twitter Links

Networks, TwitterPublished onUpdated on19 Comments on How To Bookmark Twitter Links

One of the issues with using Twitter is dealing with the huge number of useful links that stream through every day. Delicious has always been the way I organise my bookmarks but I want to bookmark so many sites that I could spend all day manually adding them.

Even with the little Delicious bookmarklet the work-flow of saving links from Twitter was so time consuming that I stopped doing it. However recently I have found a solution that automatically saves links from Twitter – this has revitalised my use of Delicious and means I can bookmark whilst using Twitter.

i69libPackrati.us

This little application looks at your own Tweets and saves anything with links as Delicious bookmarks. To set it up it is just a case of linking the two accounts (Delicious+Twitter). A BETA app by Marc Mims I have found this to be a brilliant and simple way to store links. Here are some features that make it so useful:

  • The simple work-flow is crucial. When I retweet a link or share one in my own tweets, the URL will be automatically saved in Delicious.
  • Packrati.us converts Twitter hashtags to Delicious tags. Essential to help you find the links again later.
  • Twitter favourites are bookmarked too.
  • Existing bookmarks will be replaced (this is an option in the preferences which gives you lots of ways to fine tune the process).
  • You are able to say which sources to exclude from this process, I don’t want my Posterous 365 links to be saved so I have added it as a source to exclude.

Here is how the process looks, first a tweet:

4475218985 a98da6420d

Here is the corresponding tweet automatically saved as a Delicious bookmark,

4475224393 a830d994a9

Packrati.us was easy to setup and it quietly gets on with saving my bookmarks whilst I use Twitter. It has been exactly the sort of little application that I have been looking for to integrate my use of these two great services.

I have also found ReadTwit, from Lionite, useful to snag links from all of the people I follow on Twitter into an RSS reader.

Readtwit filters your twitter feed to links only, resolves link destinations and publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading software / service to read twitter posted content along with the rest of your feeds.

The feed is pretty busy so I mainly use it for data-mining and searching for interesting resources or if I have something specific in mind. I find it less useful than Packrati.us though because I have less control over what appears there.

With Packrati.us I can choose exactly what I want to save and tag it too, it is Twitter bookmarking. If you are like me there was always links that I thought useful, never saved them and then cursed the fact as I desperately tried to find them later. Perhaps those days are over.

What processes or application do you currently use to save links from Twitter? Can you recommend any other tools that facilitates this process?

I Hope…

Curriculum, Leadership, My classPublished onUpdated on10 Comments on I Hope…

My son will soon be pitched headlong into full time education. As a father and a teacher I have certain hopes for the kind of experiences he will have in the next 15 years or so.

I hope he will be in classrooms that are bright and engaging.

I hope that he will think school is exciting, where ever it is.

I hope there will be people that will find out what makes him happy.

I hope all of his successes are celebrated.

I hope he gets outside to see the world at every opportunity.

I hope his class sizes are smaller.

I hope that there will be teachers that understand what engages him.

I hope that technology is part of how he learns, but not the only part.

I hope teachers will really understand learning and not just teaching.

I hope that when he is learning he will be able to choose the technology and tools that he needs.

I hope that his teachers help him with this choice and stand back to let it happen.

I hope his achievements in one sector are not disregarded in the next.

I hope someone inspires him.

I hope he is encouraged to learn about the things that interest him.

I hope he begins to understand the world beyond his school and his home.

I hope that someone will help him understand what future contribution he might be able to make.

I hope that learning happens in a whole myriad of places.

I hope the teachers he encounters understand what technology means to him outside of school.

I hope his teachers feel free to innovate.

I hope he is happy.

I hope he is safe.

What do you hope for?

#newleaders

Leadership, Networks, TwitterPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on #newleaders

4013729209 91c6d8f8edDoug Belshaw and Stuart Ridout were instrumental in the production of the fantastic #movemeon book,

“Tips, ideas and suggestions for all teachers from the Twitter community.”

The book was created from the tweets of fellow Twitter users, all collated with the #movemeon hashtag.

Another effort was soon started after this one titled #newleaders. I will soon be one of these new leaders and so this week I asked Stuart Ridout if we could give it a fresh look.

The tag has gained momentum over the last few days with hundreds of tips and ideas suggested about school leadership.

You can see all the tweets here at TwapperKeeper.

For the first book it took over 300 individual ideas, tweeted with the tag, to produce the book.

This is the edu-Twitter community press!

Crowd-sourcing the sort of professional development advice we need. The power of this sort of advice is in the origin: our peers.

I have no doubt that in time other topics will emerge we can contribute to. If each of us makes a single 140 character contribution we can achieve so much together as a community.

Please help with this new book by writing a tweet with your leadership advice and don’t forget the hashtag…

#newleaders

Optimus Prime Cartoon Style Robot Mode by frog DNA
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

I am a Reception Teacher

My classPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on I am a Reception Teacher

1471313903 f1a5df84c2 mTomorrow is my last day at Priestsic Primary School where I have spent the last seven years. After Easter I take up my role as Deputy Head Teacher at John Davies Primary School.

I am excited and nervous all rolled into one. This is a major crossroads in my career and I am keen to make a start.

For the first 4 weeks I will be the classteacher in the Foundation 2 or Reception class (4/5 year olds). I am really excited about this as I will be returning to an age group that inspired me to teach in the first place. I have worked in upper key stage 2 for many years now and so it will be a big change.

Some people may see this as a challenge, I see it as an opportunity. Winston Churchill would have called me an optimist:

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

I join an outstanding Early Years team and my aim is to soak it all up, to learn as much as I can from those around me and to remind myself everyday why I chose this amazing profession.

Pic: Perception by Frazzled Jen – Attribution License

Seeing Ripples

Blogging, Curriculum, Literacy, Mapping, Networks, Twitter, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on5 Comments on Seeing Ripples

When you share your classroom experiences and ideas, one thing you hope for is that they are transferable to other classrooms. This week I was delighted to see three examples of my ideas being successfully applied elsewhere.

The first is from Peter Richardson a primary school teacher in Preston who took my idea for using Voicethread for peer assessment of writing and used it for work in their Egyptian work. Here is the Voicethread he shared.

Kevin McLaughlin is a Year 4 teacher in Leicester and after reading my blog post about using Twitter and Google Forms for a data handling lesson, has applied the same ideas himself. His class compared music tastes from Kevin’s Twitter network (via a Google Form) with their own. I am pleased it worked well for his Year 4 class too, as Kevin explains,

The data that we now have will be used next week in further Maths lessons and the children added that they will continue to use the survey over the weekend at home and with friends. Real data from real people. This is what makes this type of investigation so very useful and brings an added dimension to data collection activities.

The final ripple I caused comes from Jan Webb another Year 4 teacher in Cheshire. Jan took up the challenge of using my Maths Maps idea with her class and developed a series of activities in a Google Map of Berlin for her class to use.

View Berlin in a larger map

Jan explains on her blog how they enjoyed using the resource in her class.

…a great deal of discussion arose from finding the shapes in some of the buildings and finding how many rectangles we could see in a building!  We all really enjoyed these tasks and they not only let us discuss aspects of shape, but also provoked discussions about aspects of life in Germany.

These ripples are very encouraging as you are able to clearly see the effect sharing your own practice has on other teachers and subsequently other children’s learning.

If you have always thought about starting a blog but never got round to it, why not give it a go. The more pebbles in the pond causing ripples the better.