12.21.05

Part 2: Tips for Effective Blog Reading

Posted in INSTRUCTional Technology at 10:34 am by lisa

If you gleaned a few handy tips from a previous posting about effective blog reading, you will be interested in knowing that Part 2 of Effective Blog Reading by Nev and Dave has now been posted. After experimenting with various strategies, Nev has posted his structure recommendations of using numbered priority categories. Good in theory, but I don’t think it would work for me as I need a more definitive labeling system for blending my work and leisure blog reading. Still, good tips and the point to the process is making it work for you.

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12.16.05

Marketing the Blogosphere

Posted in The Bu$ine$$ of Blogs at 3:27 pm by lisa

Bizarre yet brilliant, BlogExplosion is captalizing on the blogosphere with unique marketing strategies. If you’re looking to increase traffic to your blog site, BlogExplosion’s Rent My Blog allows members to sell or buy advertising spots on other member’s blog sites. No money is exchanged. At this time the service is based on the tried-and-true barter system. Members use credits earned to buy space and are provided with traffic statistics from recorded hits and clickthroughs for each rent campaign. How do they earn the credits? Besides the “swap meet”, BlogExplosion members can wager their credits in the Battle of the Blogs. If you think it sounds ridiculous, check out member blogs participating. You’d be surprised to find finialists for the Weblogs Awards of 2005 as well as business start-ups.
Marketing the Blogosphere
BlogExplosion’s international membership even includes a podcast directory service.

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12.12.05

Tips for Effective Blog Reading

Posted in INSTRUCTional Technology at 4:18 pm by lisa

Are your blog reading habits consuming too much of your time? Are you spending hours sorting through blogs and web sites for the latest and greatest?

Check out Nev n Dave’s Top Ten Tips for Effective Blog Reading, part 1 for good advice, like using blog readers and RSS aggregators to organize and provide summaries of collected postings. Recommendations include tips on rethinking how you categorize and manage your feeds. Then follow the links to Productivity Tips For Avid Blog Readers for some common sense time management tips and a method for prioritizing. While you’re at it, read Steve Pavlina’s blog on evaluating the quality of feeds. A little prep work upfront will help you reclaim your R & D time.

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12.02.05

A Quest for the BEST Synchronous Tool

Posted in D I S T A N C E Learning at 10:37 am by lisa

….Online Collaborations, Virtual Video Spaces, Audio Conferencing….

Recently, Iâ€™ve been investigating solutions for a viable synchronous tool that can effectively support the distance learning needs here at CGPS.
We’ve had great success using Skype for online collaborations but we wanted more features than it alone offered. Our wish list included: video conferencing, audio recording and archiving and the ability to view a presentation. Using My Ivo gave us the video and presentation but gave us security concerns with remote desktop access. The Gizmo Project has proven to be a great solution for audio recording and archiving - a feature instructors requested for record keeping. It also allows unlimited participation in a web conference but alas, doesn’t offer file transfer. Yesterday Skype released a beta version of video conferencing that even offers picture-in-picture, but unfortunately still lacks in audio recording. All these products have proven useful in the education environment for online collaborations though that is obviously not the focus of emerging VoIP applications. Call us selfish (or needy) but will someone please put this all together in one package please? Oh…FREE would be good too!