TGIF Tip-Tr.im

Need to update this post, sounds like http://tr.im is dead, check out this article

This Friday's TGIF tip is a tool that I think can be useful when working with students or staff.

http://tr.im/ is a site that will "trim" a URL or web address down to a shorter easier bit of information. To use this site just follow the link above and Copy (Ctrl C) and Paste (Ctrl V) the URL you want to shorten into the text field. You can either create a custom URL or have trim create one for you. Many people use this link when they "tweet" about a URL because it will allow you to track the traffic that goes with this URL, which can be a cool feature.

Here is an example:

http://itemnotasdescribed.com/ turns into http://tr.im/uVYM
(this is a hillarious blog about things posted on Craigslist)

Enjoy!

Social Bookmarking Site

For my first post, I would like to discuss using Social Bookmarking sites for personal productivity as well as in your classroom. Wikipedia defines Social Bookmarking as "a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

There are several different types of online bookmarking sites out there like Diigo or ikeepbookmarks but the one I feel is the most user friendly is Delicious. Here is a video from Common Craft that explains what Social Bookmarking is in Plain English.

Delicious can be used for personal and professional use to make your life easier. It allows you to store all your favorite sites online so that you only have to visit one place for all the useful sites you use. Gone are the days of going back and forth between your school and home computer searching for that one site. Now you can access your favorite bookmarked sites from any computer! YEAH!!

I work with teachers helping them to integrate technology in their classrooms and one way we share resources is through the delicious network. I bookmark sites with a TRC tag and those teachers know they can go to that tag on my site to find tons of resources that I felt would benefit them. They do the same for each other. We also tag resources for each other by using the for: tag option which sends the URL directly into the specified users inbox. A very convenient way to share resources instead of relying on email to share sites.

You can also use it in your classroom as a place to send your students when they need to do research. For example say your students are learning about fairy tales. If you already had sites you wanted them to look at your could just send them to one URL, example: http://delicious.com/jgridley/fairytales instead of creating a hot list or having the students type in each URL which usually leads to a lot of hands raised and a teacher with a HUGE headache after class.

This is just one example of using Delicious in your classroom, how do you use this social bookmarking tool for productivity?