Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
From
Information
to Knowledge
Contents:
Introduction
Capturing information
• How to create your RSS homepage
Introduction
The document contains a variety of follow up tasks and ʻHow toʼ sheets which
should help educators to set up and try a number of tools to help them
access quality information from a range of web based community sources. It
will help them to access that information through RSS feeds, process and
evaluate the information and streamline it for various purposes and show
them how to use some tools to reflect on how they transform information into
knowledge in their own classrooms and through reflection and reformulation.
As well as instruction n how to set up and use a range of web based tools, it
also contains recommendations for social networks to join, blogs to visit and
people to follow on Twitter.
Best
Nik Peachey
Yahoo groups
• Webheads in Action - fantastic group of people with a huge knowledge base and
great source of information.
• Learning with computers - originally started in south America but now an international
group of ELT educators dedicated to using technology in teaching.
• IATEFL special interest groups - IATEFL has a number of special interest groups that
have online communities that you can join for free. IATEFL stands for the
International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and their
mission is to link, develop and support English Language Teaching professionals
throughout the world.
• British Council ELTeCS - The news lists enable ELTeCS members to share
information about opportunities, events, courses, projects, good practice, debates
and ideas. There are six email based lists and you can choose the one for your
particular part of the world (or join them all).
• Mirandanet - The MirandaNet Fellowship, founded in 1992, is an e-community of
practice for international ICT policy makers, teachers, teacher educators, researchers
and commercial developers who are passionate about digital technology in teaching
and learning and about using technologies to promote cultural understanding and
democratic participation.
* Ning is a free web based platform that allows organisation or individuals to create their
own private or public social networks.
Further Reading
• ʻBlogging as part of the communityʼ - An article about how to get readers to come to
your blog and how you can make sure your blog is relevant to the community you
blog for.
• http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/06/be-part-of-community.html
• ʻCreate your own social network 7 stepsʼ - An article about creating your own social
networking community and some of the things you should consider before doing this.
• http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/06/create-your-own-social-network-7-steps.html
Fill in the information to complete your account registration. Think carefully about your
username. If you are using Twitter for professional reasons then I would advise using your
real name as this will help to identify you and link your account to your professional
reputation.
Once you have created your account you will be able to check to see if any of your email
contacts are on Twitter (I generally skip this step)
You will also probably get a few recommendations. I generally skip these too as they donʼt
usually suit my interests.
You will then be able to start Tweeting (sending messages) and following people (receiving
their messages).
Before you do this, itʼs a good idea to set up your profile so that people know a bit about
you and can identify you as being a genuine education professional. To set up your profile
just click on ʻSettingsʼ.
For me the most important parts of the profile are the ʻPictureʼ, the bio information and the
link to a website with more information.
These things are important because I like to know who I am following and who is following
me. This helps me ensure the quality of the information Iʼm getting and reduce the amount
of rubbish I have to look through.
You can also protect your tweets, which means that people will have to apply to you for
approval to be able to see the messages you are sending out. Personally I donʼt often
follow people who have protected their tweets because I want to know that what they are
writing has some quality and value for me before I subscribe to follow them. This helps me
to avoid getting rubbish, or just information that doesnʼt interest me.
Now that you have your account you need to start following people so that you can start
getting some information. The quality of the information you get really depends on the
quality of the people you follow. The best way to check that people are sharing quality
information is to check their Twitter time line.
Different people use Twitter in different ways for different reasons, some use it to share
links to information, some use it to share brief pearls of wisdom and others use it to
communicate and discuss.
Personally, I use it and look for people who use it to share links to information and useful
sites. You can check my time line at: http://twitter.com/NikPeachey
You can also look to see who I'm following and this might help you to select people that
you want to follow. Just click on the ʻfollowing link beneath each personsʼ profile
information.
Here youʼll be able to see information about who I am following and click through to their
time lines to see if you want to follow them too.
Working in this way helps you to build up a quality information network and avoid having to
sort through too much rubbish to find things that are useful to you.
When you are ready to start sharing information just go back to your own homepage and
start typing.
• Ken Wilson ELT writer, Smart Choice author, drama trainer, former English Teaching
Theatre director, sketch and songwriter. http://twitter.com/kenwilsonlondon
• Gavin Dudeney ICT trainer and consultant. http://twitter.com/dudeneyge
• Shelly S Terrell ELT, Edublogger collaborating to make educational difference. http://
twitter.com/ShellTerrell/
• Larry Ferlazzo Inner-city High School teacher - ESL & Mainstream Blogger. http://
twitter.com/Larryferlazzo/
Further Reading
• ʻBuilding your Twitter networkʼ - An article on how to build and develop your Twitter
network so that you follow useful sources and so that people follow you.
• http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/05/building-your-twitter-
network.html
• ʻ25 Twitter apps for exploiting your networkʼ - An article about different apps that you
can use along side Twitter to make it more effective as a tool for educators.
• http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/06/25-twitter-apps-for-exploiting-
your.html
• ʻHow to use Twitter listsʼ - An article with video tutorial showing how to set up Twitter
lists and use them to control and access the flow of information through your Twitter
page. http://demogirl.com/2009/10/30/how-to-use-twitter-lists/
Capturing information
RSS has become an essential part of information and knowledge management. Having
your own RSS homepage can help to bring information to you, so that you donʼt have to
go out searching through lots of sites to find it. Once you have located some quality
sources of information you can simply subscribe to their feed and add them to your home
page.
You should then see the screen below. Fill in your information and make up a password.
Be sure to make a note of your password. Then click ʻSign upʼ.
Well done! You now have your own personal homepage and feedreader.
You can now start personalising the page and adding the content you want. To do this you
should click on the icon in the top left-hand side of the screen that says; ʻ+ Add contentʼ.
This will open a new part of the interface. See below.
To start adding feeds to your homepage clcik on the ʻAdd a feedʼ icon. You should then
see this (See below)
You can now paste a URL into the field where it says ʻAdd feedʼ then click on the grey
button.
Click on the first of the four boxes that appear. The ʻwidgetʼ should then appear in your
page looking like this (See below): Well done! Youʼve added you first feed.
You can customize the way the feed looks, by clicking on Edit in the top right corner of the
widget.
There are a number of different styles you can try which might make the entries easier to
read. Try a selecting one and then clicking okay to see how it looks.
Hereʼs a ʻslideshowʼ type design which is very visual, but unlike the simple one it doesnʼt
give you any hint text to tell you what the article is about
Here are some other sites that I recommend you add now as this will give you some
practice and also supply some really valuable resources:
• Larry Ferlazzoʼs Websites of the Day…
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/
• Learning with Computers
http://learning-with-computers.blogspot.com/
• Free Technology for Teachers
http://freetech4teachers.blogspot.com/
• Janeʼs E-Learning pick of the day
http://janeknight.typepad.com/
• Absolutely Intercultural
http://www.absolutely-intercultural.com/
• Life is a feast
http://lifefeast.blogspot.com/
Be sure to explore the blog role of each of these sites too.
Further Reading
• ʻCreating a Personal Homepageʼ - An article about how to create your own
homepage and how you can use it with students. http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/
2008/07/creating-personal-homepage.html
Email: nikpeachey@mac.com
13
© Nik Peachey
From Information to Knowledge
Create your own username. This can be your email address or anything that you find easy
to remember. Then click on ʻRegisterʼ.
Your account is now created. To make it easy to bookmark pages, click on the ʻRead Laterʼ
bookmarklet and drag it onto the bookmarks toolbar on your web browser. Also drag the
URL of the Instapaper site to your book mark tool bar.
Now whenever you see an interesting article or web site that you would like to come back
to later, you just click on the ʻRead Laterʼ bookmarklet.
You see a box asking you if you want to save the link, just click ʻSaveʼ and then youʼll be
able to go back later and read the article when you have more time.
When you have time to read, access your list of links by clicking on the ʻInstapaperʼ
bookmark and it will take you to your list. You can then click the title to be taken to the web
page or click the ʻTʼ to read the article as plain text without the advertising.
Once you have looked at the site in more detail, you can delete the entry (if you are no
longer interested in the page) or keep it (it will be automatically added to your archive).
If you click on ʻEditʼ youʼll be able to annotate the link and add comments and then save
them.
• Capture links to web pages and save them temporarily until you have time to read
them in more detail.
• Build up a bibliography for use as reference for articles , dissertations, research
studies etc. Just capture links to articles as you browse, go back and read and edit
the comments to record author date you accessed it etc.
• To share links to potentially interesting articles and website (You do this by sharing
the RSS feed to your account). Hereʼs a link to the RSS for my own list of sites RSS
http://www.instapaper.com/rss/11010/
pq9vL1xYK1mNWfRG1AjUcgxmob0 .Remember though that these are ʼpotentiallyʼ
interesting sites and I havenʼt had time to look at them in any detail yet.
Instapaper will also run on your i-Phone and i-Touch, so you will be able to access your list
and catch up on your reading wherever you are.
Of course, the thing that Instapaper doesnʼt do is to read the articles and evaluate content
for you, so youʼll still have to do that.
Further Reading
• ʻCreate a temporary bookmarks reading listʼ - An article on the why and how of
creating a temporary reading list. http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/
2009/10/create-quick-bookmarks-reading-list.html
Visual Bookmarking
There are a lot of sites that I find that I know will be useful at some point, either for training
or teaching so I use SimplyBox to try to save these sites a categorise them for their
purpose.
Youʼll need to create a user name and password and use an email address to verify this,
then you can download and install the plugin for your browser tool bar.
Once you have done this youʼll be able to log in from your browser and easily store links
and information about sites whenever you see them.
Hereʼs a website that has interesting news videos on http://www.newsy.com/ Once you
have installed your plugin and tool bar, go to the http://www.newsy.com/ website. You
might want to use this with students, so you are going to store it using SimplyBox.
First click on the ʻBox and Saveʼ button on your web browser tool bar (This is the plug-in
that you should already have downloaded and installed)
Then use your mouse to drag out a square around the part of the page that you want to
save as a prompt to remind me of the content.
Once you have selected an image square, the simply box interface will open and Iʼll be
able to select the box you want to drag the image bookmark into.
Simply box has both ʻBoxesʼ and ʻContainersʼ. You can have a number of ʻContainersʼ
which you can label to suit aspects of your work or life or hobbies and each container
holds any number of boxes. Boxes are orange and containers are grey.
Drag the image into a box where you can store links to interesting video sites for students.
My video box is in my ʻWorkʼ container where I keep all the different boxes that have work
related links.
As you drag the image towards the box an arrow will appear and when you release the
mouse button the image will go into that box. Each box can contain any number of
individual bookmark images.
Each image in the box is a link to the original source. You can also add comments to each
visual link to help you remember what you liked about it or tell others what is useful.
• You can invite people to collaborate with you, so that you work together adding
content to the boxes. Simply add their email address to the ʻInvite to Shareʼ field
• You can also get a public URL for your box which you can share with anyone and
everyone. Here the link to my Video box. http://simplybox.com/public/?id=27913
• You share by publishing your RSS feed of the box so that people can subscribe and
follow new entries.
Simply box also provides the code for a widget which you can add to a webpage or blog.
This allows people to scroll through your bookmarks as though they were a slide show.
Hereʼs what that looks like. You can see it live at the bottom of this page.
SimplyBox also allows you pair your box with other services, so each time you add
something to a box it is also automatically added to the other services such as Twitter.
I hope you enjoy using simply box and find it a useful way to store and exchange links to
useful sites.
Further Reading
• ʻCreating your broadcast networkʼ - An article on creating a sharing network. This
includes information on the role of SimplyBox within this network. http://
bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/09/creating-your-broadcast-network.html
You'll have to register, but that's pretty simple and information minimal (you really just need
an email address).
Once that is done you can start creating your portal. You give it a name, decide on the
URL and a subtitle that tells people a bit about the aim of the portal.
You'll also need to decide on the level of collaboration you want and whether you want to
have a team work on it or let anyone contribute. You can always change this later, so don't
worry to much about this.
Once you have clicked on 'Create site' your portal is live and you'll be directed to the
dashboard where you can customise it.
If you click on the design tab you'll see that you can select a colour scheme for the portal.
You can even edit the more advanced features like CSS if you feel more confident.
Within 'Settings' you can also set up the portal so that it automatically takes content from
RSS feeds. So you can use this to read the feeds from your own blog or blogs that you like
to follow.
Another useful feature under 'Settings' is the 'Categories' and here you can set up various
subgroups for you content.
If you look under the advanced setting you'll also see that you can host your portal on your
own custom domain and add thins like analytics tracking code etc, so that's worth
checking out if you are really going to take this seriously.
It's also worth checking out the sidebar feature. The default site that you create will have
Google ads on, but once you edit your sidebar these will disappear and you can use it to
add links to your own sites, as I do, or to link to any fixed features you want such as an
audio, video or image file.
If you want to see what your site looks like as you fork just click on the 'Go to site' link and
you can check it out, then come back and make more changes if you wish.
One thing that I would strongly recommend is that when your site is ready, you go to
submit your first entry and when you submit one you will see a 'bookmarklet', drag this up
to the toolbar of your web browser.
Then when you see and article or web page that you want to link to, you just click on the
bookmarklet and the submission form will open with most of the details already in.
I hope you find this tool useful and can soon create your own portal to share information.
Further Reading
• ʻHow to create your own news portalʼ - an article on how you can use Slinkset to
create your own portal site. http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/10/
how-to-create-your-on-news-portal.html
You will need to create a password and enter a username, email address and agree to the
terms of use. Then you just click on ʻSubmitʼ.
You can then start creating your journal entries by adding a text and title. Each entry is
dated automatically and you can move from one entry to another using the tabs on the
right of the page.
To add pictures, you simply click on the ʻInsert Photoʼ icon at the top of the page and
locate an image on your computer and upload it.
Once you have uploaded your pictures you simply click to insert the ones you want to use.
The picture will appear in the margin and you can then drag it up or down to line it up with
the text. Users click on the images to enlarge them.
To share journal entries you click on the share icon and this enables you to email your
entry to someone else. You can either include your name, email address and message or
this can be done anonymously.
Further Reading
• ʻCreating an Online Journal for CPDʼ - An article on how and why teachers should be
creating and using online reflective journals. http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2009/10/
creating-online-journal-for-cpd.html
Creating your own blog and writing about what you are learning and how that can be used
within your own field or discipline can be a huge learning experience and one that has
helped me to assimilate and crystalize some of the information that I find and return it to
my community in a form that I hope others can benefit from.
Blogger
My tool of choice for publishing and sharing information and any knowledge I feel i have
developed is still Blogger, mainly because of itʼs simplicity and ease of use.
You will then need to create a google account if you donʼt already have one. Create an
account by creating a password, display name and adding your email address.
Give you blog a title and address. Try to complete the address with a word that is relevant
to your discipline. This will make it more likely that search engines will find your site when
people are searching for information related to your discipline.
Choose a template for your blog. You can scroll through different ones and then just click
on the one you want. You can change the template quite easily later on if you decide you
donʼt like it.
Now you are ready to start blogging. Just create a title for your first posting and start
writing your blog.
Further Reading
• ʻStructuring your postingʼ - An article on how to make your blog more accessible by
standardising the the form and structure of your blog posting.
• http://bloggingandsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2009/06/structuring-your-posting.html
• ʻHow to use Bloggerʼ - A series of video tutorials showing you how to set up and get
the best out of Blogger. http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/blogger/index.html
I have been involved in English language teaching since 1992 and have worked all over
the world for companies like the British Council, International House and IATEFL. As well
as working as a teacher and teacher trainer, I have also been involved in managing a
number of online and software projects including websites for teacher development, CD-
ROM projects, developing online communities and have developed online and blended
learning courses for the web and for virtual worlds such as Second Life. At present Iʼm
based in Morocco.
As well as publishing in journals and with ELT publishers, I also publish my own work on 4
free websites.
I hold an M.Ed in ELT and technology from Manchester University and am also a PRINCE
2 qualified Project Manager.