I’m attending the PBWorks Camp for teachers, and this is my homework for my second week, a screencast made using Jing on how Styles in MS Word can help in writing long pieces such as academic papers or business reports: 2009-07-02_1211
I re-did this a number of times, dealing with –
fitting what I wanted to say to the time available
figuring out what to leave out
making sure my set-up worked
reducing the size of my Word screen so I could fit everything into a smaller frame
stumbling while I was recording
I really like learning from screen captures myself, so I enjoyed creating one
I’m ambivalent about my title because I use Twitter mainly for learning, communication, and entertainment. I recognize, however, that business is becoming increasingly a part of Twitter. I recently posted a picture on TwitPic …
Like a Liberty Print
and commented that it reminded me of a Liberty print.
(I have fond memories of a dress made from material I got at Liberty’s in London, and several scarves I treasure, including one my husband discovered in a second-hand store and bought for me. I haven’t shopped there for years because I haven’t been in London for years.)
What happened next was this –
Libertys of London Tweet
plus an invitation to follow them. I looked at their site and saw that they had a number of people tweeting using the business name plus the (I assume) first name of the person posting the tweets, which strikes me as a good way to display a business and keep the personal touch so important a part of Twitter.
LibertyDaniel
I didn’t chose to follow them, because I live a continent away and because my prime interest is people I know, web businesses that can have an impact on what I want to do, and people I can learn from. (I love the freedom of not following back without feeling rude. So different from invitations in symetrical social sites.)
I found it very interesting that my casual mention of their business brought them directly to me; they are obviously monitoring Twitter, which I didn’t expect from such an old and traditional company – which shows me I should be careful about stereotyping. ;->
Today, in a Google Group I am part of, Gloria Hildebrandt – http://ohouse.ca/ – linked to this site –
Business & Twitter
It is clear to me that even businesses not directly connected to the web and social networking are seeing the business possibilities that Twitter offers.
So while I keep on enjoying the learning and entertainment that Twitter provides me, I also recognize that it has many uses beyond the purely personal.
The most fascinating thing about the web is that there is no end; there is always more and new.
The most frustrating thing about the web is that there is no end; there is always more and new.
Everything is always changeable. My website – jnthweb.ca – is not the same now as it was a half-hour ago. I just added my most recent brilliant idea,
Currently, I look at Twitter using the third or fourth application I’ve tried. It’s Nambu now; it was TweetDeck, and who knows what I’ll try next. And Twitter is the poster child for constant change, as Tweet after Tweet flips by.
My friend showed me her new laptop today, and I drooled enviously, although mine does everything I want and need and is only a little more than a year old.
I’m behind in my Bloglines again, no, make that still. I never did fully catch up.
Trying to catch up! - via Creative Commons/Flickr
So I love the web, and I learn so much from what often feels like frittering my time away, but there is no end to what you can learn to do and learn and do on it. Clay Shirky, in Here Comes Everybody, says in the first 100 years after the invention of the printing press, it broke more than it fixed. I know that the printing press brought endless developments with it from dictionaries to science, from the Enlightenment to romance novels, and more. And here we are in the same early stage with the web, where everything is alway beta, never done!
Seems like a contradiction in terms, but autodidacts are social; we have to be. When I learn from the web, I access websites, support people, books, friends, and the wonderfully generous denizens of the web. I’ve spent much time over the last couple of weeks trying to get on top of creating the website I want, one that looks competent and meaningful. (I believe, as I repeatedly say, that we start reading before we decode a single word. We get an impression of the page or screen and our attitude hinders or helps us understand what is in front of us. So I want a site that appears knowledgeable.) To create the site I want I have,
searched for information on Google, using different queries;
complained on Twitter (and elicited help);
phoned a generous web-friend and accepted his help;
bought and read parts of books;
downloaded and read parts of pdfs;
talked to knowledgeable friends;
tried out all kinds of WSIWYG solutions, both offered by friends and found through Google;
finally circled around to deciding on either (decisions are hard for me ;-> ) KompoZer or WordPress.org both of which I’ve been learning piecemeal over a number of years;
settled in to create the site I want on my domain;
read up on FTP through Google and on my domain host’s Support pages;
sorted out, with phone help from my domain host’s Support, NetFirms, how to use FileZilla;
re-installed the use of WordPress, which I had deleted in a fit of frustration and pique, with the help of NetFirm’s phone Support;
choose a free wp template, Titan, (brother of the theme I’m using in this, my wp.com blog) and decided I would need their Support, and to pay for it because they have to make a living;
decided to follow Jestro on Twitter for information and quick requests for support;
Spent all day trying to follow a tutorial on how to access Titan’s CSS, gave up and added my problem to the Jestro Pro forum and went to supper. (I had done similar CSS work with help from Dave Ferguson on my wp.com blog so I knew it was possible.);
Got back from supper to find the answer already on the Jestro Support Forum (and an explanation that the tutorial could have been clearer);
made some changes I feel good about, but also discovered that my learning will be continuing! ;->
All of those were interactions with people or the communications created and left by people. Even autodidacts are, by necessity, social learners.
I will be accepting the help of other generous people, directly and indirectly, but there are two more important observations I want to make:
As a teacher, I understand why students get cranky and worse when they are frustrated because they are just not “getting” something they want to learn. It makes me (and I suspect them) feel unintelligent and inadequate, and I, (and I’m sure them) get upset with myself and anyone else I can blame. It must be even more so for those who learn differently than our schools teach. That is why I am revealing my own struggles; learning is only easy when you are, by your own nature, good at learning in certain areas. We ought to be compassionate for our own and others’ struggles to learn in the areas where we don’t have the natural velcro for.
It is hard to ask for help, even help you have paid for, but you must in order to keep on keeping on (as Gladys Knight advised)! I don’t know if it’s a societally developed fear of loss of face or an inherent fear of showing weakness, but I find it difficult to ask for help. I think others do too.
So that’s my current learning struggle, which I will continue on with, after I get some work that I’m good at 🙂 done.
An autodidact is someone who learns outside of regular school settings, someone who teaches herself (or himself). It used to be a kind of demeaning label, meaning someone who had spotty and uncertified knowledge. I claim the label “autodidact” as a badge of honour! I used to learn from books, even sometimes from tv, but now we have the web. I love the web. I learn so much from what I find on it.
Recently I gave myself a task that requires me to learn more about how to create web pages. I’d heard about CSS and knew, theoretically, what it could do. But every time I tried to do anything using it I hit THE GAP. THE GAP is the point where I get stuck and can’t go any further, even though I can see what I could do two steps along the learning path I’m on. When I hit THE GAP, I’m stuck. What I do then, is ask a knowledgable friend, if I can find one, or, more often, find a workaround. For a while, my workaround was wikis. I love wikis but they’re meant for sharing, not for using as your personal website, although they can work, sort of, as one.
One of My Wikis
Sometimes I find something a lot of the design work has been done for me, and I use that. Blogger had templates, and so does WordPress, which I graduated to.
My Blog
But my design vision just isn’t satisfied.
I used tools like the old Netscape Composer and currently its grandchild, Nvu, both of which are WYSIWYG web page creators.
My Domain
But my reach exceeds my grasp because I want something I have more control over. I want to produce the kind of website that says to readers “this person has powerful content: you can tell by the appearance!” (I’ve read the research on how people are reading before they decode a single word. The appearance of the text and page gives information that signals information to readers which profoundly affects how they take in the content.)
I’ve learned a little HTML code, and I’ve bookmarked sites where I can find more. But I’ve never taken a course in it, and a lot of it just looked bizarre and unreadable to me. (I was a text person initially, and not technically inclined, but I want to communicate on the web so I have to learn how to do so wholistically.) And using “View Source” and copy/paste seemed to me like a kind of plaigarism and theft. (What can I say? I’m old-school.)
Sometimes I think I learn backwards. I know my desired destination but I keep getting blocked at THE GAP. But I continue to struggle to build a little further out into the unknown territory, and I learn something from each struggle. Each struggle closes THE GAP a little more. I read manuals and follow instructions but I think most people who are inside the knowledge bubble have trouble being aware of what those outside the bubble might not know. The instructions are crisp and clear until they mention going to the “terminal shell” or some other ‘obvious’ term. Huh? Wikipedia tells me what it is, but I don’t get how to use it in this set of instructions. (I’m not the knowledgable audience they were writing for.) So I stop and try some other path. Till I get frustrated with it, because I’ve foundTHE GAP in it. I’m really good at findingTHE GAP. So when I find someone, often on the web, who explains things in a way I can understand, someone who gives me the practical aspects of the concept, I am delighted, excited and grateful.
That happened to me today. I found Chris Coyier’s video on HTML & CSS – The VERY Basics. 32 minutes of pure pleasure. He shrank –the gap – till it virtually (no pun etc.) disappeared for me.
He has a gift for teaching and I’m a grateful student.
a dang’rous thing”, at least according to Alexander Pope. He declared that we should “Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring.” I, however, think a little learning is a wondrous thing; it can addict you to drinking deep at the Pierian Spring, that is, at wanting to know more and how to do more.
I came to the digital world initially with fear and reluctance at a time when those who knew how the technology worked were seen as the digital specialists. People with a communication background who were enthralled by the communication possibilities offered by the digital world (as I came to be) were invisible to those looking for web expertise. When I was told that part of my writing course would include introducing my students to MSWord, back in the 1990s, I began to look around my college for help because I realized that I couldn’t ask my husband, as I did at home, to come into my classroom (a computer lab) and open and set up the program for me. Besides, he preferred Word Perfect.
So when my college offered half day courses in various computer aspects, I signed up. I took many of the courses, (Word I, II, & III, Web Browser I, II, III, & IV) many times. (My working memory has always been a bit wonky; I need a lot of repetition and/but I get bored easily. Bit of a problem sometimes;->)
I bought books on MSWord and tried to sort out what would be useful for my students. I couldn’t figure out how to figure out stuff in the books. What the @#$%, for example, was this thing that had “Normal” written in it? And why would anyone want to use a “View” called “Outline”? Meanwhile, in my writing classroom where I was ?teaching? students how to use Word for their essays, something interesting was happening. Some of my students were telling their friends, and sometimes even me, some things that could be done using Word. One taught me about Styles and Tables of Content. Wa-HOOOO! (Sometimes translated as “eureka”!)
2009 Version of MS Word's Styles
While I didn’t totally depend on the kindnesses of students, I was encouraging social learning in my classrooms, not just because it was a trendy pedagogical approach, but because it helped me where I worked! I was learning from my students that the trendy pedagogical approach of group work was highly effective for teaching writing and computer use, and that it was highly effective for my own learning. They learned how to use a word-processor to make their own writing easier to revise and edit; I learned various aspects of word-processing that I was responsible for teaching, and that I could also use in my own writing tasks.
I was shanghaied onto a PD committee to introduce other professors to the web and other things digital. I knew that I didn’t know enough to be on it, but I was crafty enough to know there would be people on it I could learn from. I attended religiously. There was a woman my age, (shall we say “mature”) who taught humanities subjects and was not a computer programmer or technician, but knew so much about the web’s technical aspects! She had her own website hosted on our college’s server. I was filled with admiration for the way she dressed, and for her knowledge and ability in the digital world. I decided (unconsciously) to take her as my role model. After all, she wasn’t young, male, or a computer programmer, so maybe I could learn more digital stuff and be more like her.
When I tried to learn more, for example HTML code, so I could have my very own website, (hosted on my college’s sever) I was frustrated. I heard about “WYSIWYG” software for creating websites and I was intrigued. A little learning (people can put up websites without learning HTML code because there’s software that lets you do it based on how it looks!) made me hungry to learn how to do this thing that was easier than learning HTML code. (Although I had memorized <b>bold</b> and its companion <i>italics</i>.)
I took weekend courses in this WYSIWYG software, where we followed detailed instructions so we all could produce identical web sites, presumably based on the learning theory that if we followed instructions once, we would know how to use the software. (Did I mention my wonky working memory?) I learned enough to go out searching for easier WYSIWYG software and found Netscapes’s Composer. I was thrilled and excited; I could figure out (with the help of a website put up by a female professor whose name is lost in the mists of my memory) how to put together a web site, and I did, individual link by individual link.
My First Website, made with Netscapes Composer
A little
employment-forced,
employment-aided, and
social
learning had moved me along, and also taught me how much more there was to learn, and started a dangerous ;-> addiction.
(A young writer I coach likes to say, in square brackets, at points in her novel draft, “much happens here”.)
[MUCH HAPPENS HERE]
So my awareness of
how much I am a social learner and
how manuals and books only work for me after I already know something and
how important the web is to human communication (more than the printing press, even!)
has led me to
blog and
join Facebook and
Twitter.
Through blogging and Bloglines I have encountered some people repeatedly, most of whom I’ve never met f2f, but I feel like I know them. Some of them have commented on some of my blog posts and/or “friended” me on Facebook and occasional messages between us – usually connected with education and the web – have made them feel like colleagues – and I need colleagues now that I teach only part-time, and yet still hunger for fellow learners in this rapidly changing communications world. Many of these colleagues I follow on Twitter, and recognize their icons.
Ah Twitter, that time-sink and/or valuable resource, that place for sharing treasures, over-sharing quotidian detritus, and just plain bitching complaining!
So I was again searching for the perfect WordPress template for my edublog (this one) and I found it, except that the body was in serif font! I can’t stand serif font, except on paper, and even there, not so much. I NEED Lucida Grande, or at least some kind of sans serif. (Good audience-aware web design, IMHO, requires sans serif on screens because it’s easier on our eyes.) I poked around and figured out that for U.S. $15.00, I could get an upgrade that would allow me to alter the CSS. (Did I mention how little I know about HTML? Even more about CSS.) I had poked around on Google and found out the definition of CSS and it sounded … interesting. So I used PayPal and got the upgrade. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I tried. I searched and found out more. I even read the FAQs and tutorials. For a break, I opened my TweetDeck and … complained.
I got a direct message from one of my web colleagues inviting a phone call, called, talked for a long time with both of us looking at both our blogs’ backends (really – not a rude thing at all;->). Eventually, after much help from the phone call and another book (WordPress for Dummies) I got the sans serif font I wanted in the body of my blog – as you can see!
When I boasted in a later Tweet, I got the kind of feedback I most value –
Feedback on Using CSS to Change My Font
Thanks so much Dave!
And when I later got a request for a post for Dave’s Carnival –
Dave's Carnival
I was delighted for this inspiration, this opportunity to look at the cascading impact of each bit of little learning, and the generosity of digital colleagues!
So, what’s my point? My point is that real tasks and social colleagues, whether coffee line-up or digitally based, move a little learning into into a deep enough draught at the Pierian Spring, so that we
Michael Wesch is a pedagogical hero of mine. I’ve watched videos his classes made; I’ve watched a video of him explaining his teaching, and I asked a question on Twitter, and even though he doesn’t follow me, got an anwser from him within a few hours! He understands the impact of the new communication ecosphere we swim in, applies his understanding to his teaching, and can explain clearly why this is urgently central to education.
Here is a link to my highlighted copy of his recent Academic Commons article – From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able which I discovered via Stephen Downes. Indeed, as Wesch says, you set up your network and information comes to you.
As I thought again about being an autodidact and what universities could do for learners, I realized that universities have been part of my Personal Learning Environment. (If you are an autodidact, you have to have your own PLE. For years mine only included books and other people. Now it includes bloggers, social bookmarking, the way I’ve organized my computer, other people in person, and books, probably in something like that order;->)
That wasn’t true for my undergraduate degree, or only partially so. I took the courses I had to and the ones I believed I could pass. But while I can recall nothing from my Astronomy for Humanities Students except the professor’s disdain for Astrology, I did learn which is which. Of some importance I guess;->
What I learned in the courses I thought I could pass was that some courses (in my stronger areas} that I took because they gave me a nice schedule, could open up into new insights, understandings and interests. I came to appreciate that courses could have hidden treasures for me, that some academics had an approach and a breadth of knowledge that I could learn from, that they weren’t just showing off their knowledge so they could win some obscure “I know more than you – ha, ha” game. I learned that, sometimes, struggling through ideas and information allowed me to construct a complex web of understanding that was deeply meaningful to me in my life. It was a thrilling discovery. That and a mate who habitually reads, questions and wants to know more, have made me a learning addict (and an autodidact).
I have spent my life trying to figure things out. Both my graduate degrees unlocked new understandings for me, and both were part of my PLE. I signed up for each because I had a question that the books and the people around me couldn’t answer. Both times, some of my courses were blind alleys to endure, and many were quests that left me with new treasures. And both times, I chose what I wanted to learn about and continued my learning outside my studies as well as inside.
So my attitude towards universities and learning is that of a frustrated idealist. I know I learned deeply and richly because universities have been part of my life, but why are the pockets of innovative and exciting learning/teaching about communications so few and/or so hard to find in this era of explosive change in communication tools and concepts?
Sometimes a bunch of experiences mash together and inspiration results. A couple of day ago I received a comment on one of my posts – #2 by Virginia Yonkers where she said “Try working on another’s computer! Just as we have idiosyncrasies in the speech, how we do math, writing (think of handwriting), we develop different patterns for tools and how we use them. If we can see how to modify a tool or how it is used to achieve our goals, we are more motivated to ask for help, persist through problems”. That has been my experience in my own learning.
Later in the day I was working with some people who were not that efficient at using the web and wanted to show them what I regard as an essential web tool, del.icio.us, the social bookmarking application. I reached out to the laptop, not my own, to try to open up my del.icio.us account so I could show them why it was so useful. Two problems:
Although this was the same model as my laptop, the owner doesn’t use a mouse, and I do. I have to think to use the trackpad and that slows me down and klutzes me up;
The owner’s desktop looks different and so do the applications because she has them set larger than I do mine, also disorientating.
Both of these reminded me of Virginia’s comment, and an often overlooked factor in encouraging people to expand their web efficiency. I think knowing how to set up and manipulate our tools is essential to any skilled artisan, knowledge workers included. Which computer we use is important, but knowing how to set up our PLE (Personal Learning Environment) or, the term I prefer, our PLWE (Personal Learning and Working Environment) is foundational. To work efficiently and effectively, you need to streamline your access to the different software and applications you are going to use. You need to fit your tool to your use.
Because I have a laptop, I can travel with it and use it for presentations. Because I am on it for several hours almost every day, and because I am impatient, I have researched and developed my own idiosyncratic setup.
So let me explain, starting at the top left:
I use Apple and Firefox because experts I know talked about how easy and handy they were, and that has been my experience too; I like them.
I have my applications dock on the left side where I am less likely to “bump” into it. What can I say; it works for me.
Most importantly, I have a personal toolbar, right under the address bar, where I keep all the links I regularly use. I use the Bookmarks feature to put these in the order I want them in, and to shorten their names so I can squeeze more on. I add other links I frequently use too, but allow these to be beyond the “>>” at the right end of my personal toolbar. When I click on the “>>” a long list of these medium important links appears and I can choose from them.
Most of my “Saved for possible future use” bookmarks, I don’t put in the Bookmarks feature of my browser (Firefox) because they are then tied to my computer, and when I get a new one (yum!) or have a crash (the pain! the pain!) or use another computer (awk-ward!), I don’t have access to them. Instead I use an online application for social bookmarking, usually del.icio.us, (although I’m also checking out diigo). I can access my del.icio.us (or diigo) accounts from any online computer, provided I can remember my user name and password. (Not always that easy ;->) So I always have access to the links I’ve saved. Saving to del.icio.us is easy using the (circled) icons (which I dragged onto my address bar from the del.icio.us site) to the left of the URL field. The checkerboard, when clicked, opens my del.icio.us account so I can find previously saved links. The tag icon that says “TAG” on it, when click opens a small field in front of the site I’m saving, and allows me to add tags so I can easily re-find the site when I want it.
I have a Google toolbar even though it takes up screen space on my small laptop screen because it has an icon, circled, that allows me to open a new tab with one click. I like having lots of tabs open so I can switch from site to site with ease, which brings me to my final PLWE essential >
When I took the screenshot above, I had seven (count ’em!) tabs open in Firefox. Often I have more because it makes my work easier. When I finish this draft, I will add links, and what I usually do is open the site I want to link to in another tab, copy the link address, return to my draft and add the link. Multiple tabs – I love ’em!
So there you have it, some of my secrets for making my work efficient and easy to manage, for setting up my PLWE, my “tool”. All learned, I’ll add, over years of chatting with others and reading about what the possibilities are in this ever changing web world.
Recently I posted a comment on a blog and checked off the little box that okays email notification every time a comment is added. The blog post is on Will Richardson’s Weblog-ed: learning with the read/write web and it is an urgent call for educators, aka teachers, to get more knowledgable about the web and it’s amazing pedagogical possibilities – http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/urgent-21st-century-skills-for-educators-and-others-first/ (Richardson is also the author of a very helpful book, one I’ve purchased myself, called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.) As I write this, there are a total of 78 comments on Rihardson’s post, with none directly negative, and few even remotely questioning his premise of the importance of teachers of ALL subjects learning how to use the web to enhance their students learning, and their own.
If you spend any time on the web, even minimal searches will lead you to a very active edublogsphere (strange word, I know, but based on blogsphere as defined in Wikipedia). And, you will see there many very very passionate advocates for using what Will Richardson calls “the read/write web”, what is also called “Web 2.0”, and, increasingly, “Social Media”. Many of these passionate advocates are trying to figure out how to get more of their colleagues to join them in learning about the web and how to use it in teaching and learning. That’s one of the solitudes.
There’s another, larger, solitude. One of my closest friends hates the computer and the web. She reluctantly uses computers for writing, for email, and in her teaching, where one of her courses is on a CMS (Course Management System), but she is very clear about really disliking the whole experience. She’s very bright, very knowledgeable about pedagogy, and very passionate about teaching well. We have lots of great conversation, and she’s very tolerant of my web evangelism. She acknowledges my passion for the web as a teaching/learning tool, but it’s clear her aversion is deeply rooted. We’ve been talking about why she feels this way, because I want to persuade her that the web can make her life and her teaching easier and richer, as it has mine.
I didn’t start out a lover of the computer. In fact I feared and resented it initially. My credibility and my lack of credibility in this debate come from the same reality: my background. I am a writer and a former English/Communications teacher, and know little about HTML coding and many of the more arcane technical aspects of computers. If it isn’t easy, I don’t want to know about it. That’s why I love Web 2.0, social media, the read/write web – because you can create content, text and images, almost as easily as you can read on it.
I initially felt blackmailed into using a computer; word-processing made putting my thoughts down on paper, writing, much easier than typing or hand-writing. So even though I had to get my husband to navigate through DOS every single time I wanted to write, I couldn’t give up writing using word-processing. Eventually Windows was developed and I learned to turn on the computer by myself. (And eventually I got a Mac and computer life got even better, but that’s another story!) Then the Communications Department at my college was cut and teachers with up to 15 years seniority were laid off, almost half the department. I was traumatized, and when a coordinator whose program I had been assigned to, wanted me to include writing using word-processing and how to file using Windows and other web stuff, I said I’d do it. I was terrified, but I knew some computer experts and made them my mentors. So I understand my friend’s reluctance to use web applications for herself and her students; I’ve been there.
One of my friend’s explanations of why she hates using the web is that she gets frustrated and hates asking for help. Hating to ask for help is, I believe, an occupational overuse syndrome commonly found in teachers. We’re used to being the one in the room who knows the answers. We’re the fount of knowledge, and if somebody else knows more than us, that can feel disorienting, or even threatening. I believe that if I hadn’t been traumatized by the fear of losing my job, I might not have found the flexibility to learn from my mentors and (even scarier) my students. So I understand where my friend’s, and many other teachers’ (and administrators’) reluctance is coming from.
But (and this is central to the issue of teachers in all subjects needing to learn more about the web and infuse their new knowledge into their teaching) there are three realities:
The web is, and I can argue this both theoretically and practically, the most profound change in human communication ever, more profound, even, than the changes coming from the printing press;
Our students are naive wanderers in this new communication wilderness and need to learn how to protect themselves on it, not by hiding from it, but by knowing how to think critically about it and act sensibly on it; and
Our students are unaware of many web possibilities and need to learn how to use the web for their learning and for their future work.
So, what’s the answer? How do I persuade my friend to explore the web more? How do we, the passionate evangelists of the edublogsphere, persuade our colleagues to start exploring the web’s pedagogical possibilities? Of course there is no one answer, but there are some paths:
Keep on offering workshops to our colleagues and administrators;
Find out the interests of our colleagues (as we would of our students) and show them the web uses they are most likely to find attractive;
Explain that although the web was difficult to use initially, it has become much easier to learn about; (nobody needs to use DOS or HTML any more);
Show our colleagues and friends that much of their learning about useful web applications can be learned in private, using the web itself – by searching, by reading edublogs, by using the so-called “Tours” that many applications provide to help you learn how to use them;
Put up information on the web for those who are interested but wary; and
I have a wiki on ways to use the web in teaching and in business – http://jnthweb.pbwiki.com/ – useful for those in secondary and post-secondary education.
And I’m going to continue to use my blog space here to suggest web applications, both long-term and new, that teachers and others might want to use. Please feel free to bookmark this site, until you learn how to RSS to save web site addresses.
Learning Living 