Web+2.0+How-to


 * How to get started with Web 2.0 tools**...

   Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that allows you to organize and "tag" web bookmarks/favorites for easy access later and allows you to access your "favorites" on any computer in the world. 1. Click the logo above and then click the green Join Now! button on the top right of the Delicious page. Set up your account. 2. Click on add a bookmark - or import your favorites from your browser and you are good to go.

[|Diigo]** is a another social bookmarking tool that can also be used for student research! 1. Click on the logo, watch the demo video. 2. Click Join Now to set up your account.
 * [[image:homepage_logo.jpg width="107" height="54" link="http://www.diigo.com/"]]

**Twitter -** excellent microblogging/social networking tool for connecting to other professionals and sharing info and articles
1. Go to [] and create your account. 2. Then go to [] to watch the "how to use Twitter" video and scroll through the page to look at the FAQ and other help files there. 3. I suggest you check your settings and decide if you want to keep your account public (I do because I use it almost exclusively for professional development, but be aware that anyone can then find every one of your tweets on Google). 4. You can also decide if you want to get tweets by cell phone (be sure you have unlimited text messaging service or it will cost you!). This takes a little patience to set up but it is worth it if you have certain people you want to follow during the day... 5. Once you sign on to Twitter, you can go [|here] and add your name to the Twitter4Teachers wiki under the appropriate heading, and find other educators you'd like to follow.

**Blogging**
These are blogging sites that you can use for education: [|Edublogs.org] - use this one for school and library blogs. It is specifically set up for education and our District has given us permission to use it, so it is not blocked. [|WordPress.com] - great for personal blogging [|Blogger] - this is a free blog tool from Google and if you have a Google account, you can add this easily using your Google account ID. Note: Blogger is filtered by the LCSD, but has great blogs by many other teachers and tech professionals - you can use it at home. More on set up and use later...

RSS - with Google Reader or Netvibes
RSS allows you to gather news and articles from all your favorite blogs and websites in one place so you don't have to travel to a 100 sites each day or week to keep up. Great tool to teach kids how to organize information (yet another AASL Std). 1. Go to [|Google]and set up an account if you don't already have one. 2. [|Go to iGoogle] and set up your homepage. Then click on My Account (top right corner) and go to the Reader link. Here you can add subscriptions to blogs you want to read daily.

**Podcasting**
[|Audacity.sourceforge.com] - The easiest free application I've found for recording audio for podcasts to embed in your blog or website. More on how to install and use later.

**Convert YouTube videos to .wmv or other formats for downloading**
When you find very good professional development and education-related videos on YouTube that are NOT accessible at school due to District filtering, you can download those videos and convert them to .wmv files, put them on a flash drive and then use them at school. To do that... 1. From the YouTube video, select Download video (at top of video). Save it to your computer desktop. 2. Go to [|Zamzar.com] and you will see this: 3. In Step 1, Click browse to find your document. 4. In Step 2, select wmv (this format will play in Windows Media Player on most computers in the District) 5. Step 3 - enter your email address (where you want the link for the finished product sent). 6. Click convert... and go do something else.... 7. You will get an email in 15 minutes or so (depending on how long the video is). Click on the link in the email that takes you to the Zamzar page. 8. You will see your video title and a button that says "Download". Click the button and tell it where to save the file. 9. Now you can transport it anywhere you need to show it.