https://twitter.com/wxDoll
Only briefly familiar with Rich Site Summary (RSS) functions from a previous class assignment, this recent task of implementing a Twitter account was informative and needed. Most of my current reading materials target academic topics, but personal interests help form my opinions and having sources available for these interests is also important to me. For this reason, in addition to following bloggers McLeod, at https://twitter.com/mcleod, and Gorman, at https://twitter.com/michaeljohng, I selected varying Twitter links to follow, and several - such as twitter.com/educationweek, twitter.com/BBCBreaking, and twitter.com/JoyceMeyer, have my attention daily.
Subscribing to multiple websites allows me to scan new content and saves me time. Before Twitter, I surfed multiple Web pages of content before selecting content to actually read. For example, today Education Week tweeted that a cachet of the degree earned is not a prerequisite for successful/rewarding career. BBC-Breaking tweeted that the Winter Olympics officially opened. Joyce Meyer tweeted that a mind made up is a powerful thing. Frequently these sources align to many of my interests, and using Twitter I can make appropriate selections from a filtered menu of reading options.
Today on my twitter account, https://twitter.com/wxDoll, I wrote: it is not that I have too many students, so much as it is I do not have nearly enough parents. My emphasis here is that as a teacher I am motivating my students to learn, and this includes motivating parents to help with learning.
Diigo
https://www.diigo.com/user/wxdoll
My experience with Diigo continues to be productive. I have added two folders to organize the sites and information that I use for 7th and 8th grades. Already, I see my former way of saving information and links as passé. My favorites-menu and cut-and-paste-screen-shot techniques only vaguely resemble the many functions of bookmarking. Well worth my efforts, Diigolet was not as easy as I had hoped it would be to set up. The drag-and-drop steps shown in most of the online instructional videos are likely from older versions and the pages and images looked very different from which appeared on my computer screen.
After following a few prompts, I managed to get the Diigolet dragged to a tool bar. From the Library menu I opened a bookmark prompt to paste URLs and make the one word tags. A new favorite site, Kidhealth.com at http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/DSquiz.htmland, was first to be added to the 7th grade folder, in my Diigo library. I have not managed to use the sticky-note option as of yet, but I hope to use this function successfully soon. Use of bookmarking is going to be awesome; I will be able to keep track of my frequented online resources like a librarian-avatar.