First question we asked the class:
Which century are you in?

• Are you using MyEdumail (80%), 20% independent school proprietal email.
• Internet Explorer is your principal browser (?80%)? 
• Firefox? (?a few)
  
• Flickr? (1 person)
• Del.icio.us (1 person)
• Not heard of RSS (100%)
  

What we talked about

Case Study: Lekowala's use of the internet tools circumvents a potentially hazardous situation.

• Lekowala' is reading Indian newspapers in preparation for his school's field trip to Tamil Nadu, India.
• He picks up information about dengue, then of chikungunya.
  
• He amplifies his search via Google and picks up more RSS feeds on his newsreader.
  
• Chikungula and dengue (including DHF) reach significant a number and spread to numerous places.
  
• The refugee camp they were to work in reports a few cases.
  
• Little is known about disease, but some symptoms are harzardous.
  
• The overseas trip is suspended.
  
• Colleagues are kept up to date with his data. He is able to share relevant sites quickly and effectively with del.icio.us.
  
• A second overseas trip is cancelled based on his sources. 

With these search, community and organisational tools, he amassed a significant amount of information in a very short time and circumvents a critical situation objectively.


Demonstration - information search

• Google Web search for Chikungunya.
• Opening links in tabs, they load in background with Firefox.
• Surveying for important information.
• Adding links to del.icio.us with tags.
• Current information: Google News search for Chikungunya.
• Add RSS feed to newsreader.
• More current information: Google Blogsearch
• Add RSS feed to newsreader.
• Prepare a document with a summary of that information with citations.
• Collaborate and publish in Google Docs or export to Word.
  

I: Online Bookmarks

• Delicious? del.icio.us, a social bookmarking system.
  
• Alllows you attach or add a keyword to a webpage of interest for later viewing.
• Once you login to your account, you can add bookmarks from any computer, anywhere!
• What have others bookmarked under the same tag? Learn from the community.
  
• E.g. Cf. My bookmarks on Firefox: http://del.icio.us/sivasothi/firefox
• The community's bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/tag/firefox
• Popular bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/popular/firefox
• Webpage:  del.icio.us - go on, grab your account!
• Registration usually involves the following (get used to it):
• Userid - this will be used in your account, e.g. http://del.icio.us/lekowala/
  
• Name,
• Password with a request to key in twice so there are no mistakes (so don't cut and paste into the second field).
• Email - to confirm your registration (useful to have a web email to do this).
  

II: Tagging helps organise the internet

• Tagging is similar to assigning a keyword.
  
• When you choose a keyword, you are presented with only the things you tagged with that keyword.
• You can view what the internet community tagged with the same keyword.
  
• You can search the subset of information tagged with a keyword.
• Tags are used in:
• gmail - mail (here it replaces folders), part of Google. 
• flickr - photos, now owned by Yahoo!
• del.icio.us - bookmarks
• technorati - blog posts
  
• youtube - videos, now owned by Google
  

III: Firefox 2.0 http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

• Who is Firefox by? A community of users!
  
• Interested? Read "Firefox: An open source accessibility success story." By Aaron Leventhal. IBM, October 2006.
• Read about some of Firefox's features here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features.html#experience
• Tabbed browsing - open several pages, let the rest load in background while you read the first page. 
• Popup blocker - get rid off those nasty adverts!
• Google searchbar - our most frequent activity acknowledged, with a Google searchbar on the top right.
  
• Add more search engines - there is more to searching than Google - Firefox makes it easy to add search engines for flickr, wikipedia, technorati, etc.
• If you do not have administrator rights on your computer, you will not be able to install Firefox.
• You can download Portable Firefox on a USB drive and use it!
  
• This means your bookmarks, extensions and links will be portable as well!
  

IV: Search engines

• Google is only the beginning!
• See other possible search engines when you add search engines in Firefox
  
• E.g. Add Google Scholar, Google Blogsearch, Vivisimo, Wikipedia, Flickr, Tehnorati.

V: Citing sources and copyright

• Whenever you present information, it is assumed it is original.
• Acknowledgement
• If it is derived from other sources, say so. Else it's not honest.
  
• Also, it's a way to:
  
• give credit where it is due (isn't it fun to be credited?)
• Allow the reader the opportunity to examine those sources themselves if they want to.
• When we blog, if we get an idea from elsewhere, we provide a link to the originator, and say:
• "hat tip to so and so" (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/u3azb) and
  
• "thanks to so and so" (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/y7uorf).
  
• It's way to link up the community.
• Thanks and encouragement.
• Thank your data provider!
• I try to email every source I get information from, for my Animal Behaviour lectures.
  
• Some individuals are really happy to hear from me and are encouraged to put up even more content for free!
• Copyright or terms of use.
  
• Some information carry a clear indication of terms of use, e.g. in Habitatnews, a logo links to a clear set of terms provided by Creative Commons.
• Many sites will allow non-profit or educational use.
  
• Some sites release content to the "Public Domain" - completely free, you can even derive works for commercail use! 
• When you provide content, whether a webpage, presentation, photo or blog, indicate the terms of use!
  

VI: RSS feeds (only mentioned briefly, to be elaborated here)

• Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) - keeping track of multiple webpages from one desktop application.
  
• Desktop version of the web news aggregator Newsline = Omea Reader (PC users) and NetNewsWire (Mac users)

VII: GMail http://gmail.com

• Size matters - 2GB and growing - versus how much was that in myedumail, again?
  
• Conversations (threading) - a conversation grows but space it occupies in your inbox = 1 line.
  
• Quoted text hidden - a conversation grows, but only the immediate reply is seen!
  
• Auto-completion of email addresses.
  
• Gmail archives means GMail does the archiving, not you!
  
• Where is that email? The power of the Google search engine in your inbox!
• In built chat.
• Google Docs in-built.
• Google Spreadsheeets in-built.
• Read "Why use GMail?"

VIII: Google Docs and Spreadsheets

• Starting a document or spreadsheet
  
• Edit,
  
• insert image,
  
• insert link,
  
• save as Word
  
• Collaborating
• Adding users,
  
• who else is editing?
  
• revisions,
  
• who made changes?,
  
• conflict resolution
  
• Publishing
• It's on the net!
• Update
• Stop publishing
  

• How to reduce a long URL
• http://tinyurl.com/
• http://snipurl.com/

IX: Blogs (mentioned briefly)

• Yahoo! Blogger'
• Google Blogger
• Wordpress
• Blogs mentioned
  
• Seashore workshop (Lekowala's wordpress blog post),
• Habitatnews
  
• Raffles Museum News