compfight + a flickr™ search tool via kwout

Compfight is a simple tool/website that allows you to do a topic search of flicker images or if you want to be more specific you can search using tags. It has a very handy Creative Commons filter/switch that you can turn on to immediate filter out only those images that have an open use or some sort of Creative Commons licensing.

The often discussed notion of an external brain or place to keep all sorts of information in an easy to access format is no longer just an idea it is reality with Evernote.

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. This free tools works on Windows and OSX, any smartphone and on the Web. Information input into Evernote is automatically synced across all devices.

Watch the following video, then go to the Evernote website and view the What is Evernote Page and I will guarantee that you will start using this free web-based tool.

If you want even more power and control you can download and install the Windows or OSX client and your information from the web will automatically be synced to your system.

One of my favorite ways to use Evernote is as a digital voice recorder. On a recent trip to Calgary I had several good ideas that i didn’t want to loose so I simply fired up Evernote in my iPhone and recorded my thoughts.

The New Note screen on the Evernote iPhone App gives you four options so capturing information in any format is just a single click away.

Educational Applications

• Evernote is the consummate research tool I wish I had in when I was doing my graduate studies–the ability to capture, store and index all forms in information in almost any format makes it so easy to get at the information at a later date.
• Evernote will also do OCR and is able to capturing and indexing text from images so capturing notes from a whiteboard, signs, product information sheets, business cards, etc. save you valuable time.
• Because Evernote syncs across all devices I will create my meeting agenda or lecture notes in Evenote on my laptop and then access them via my iPhone.
• The indexing and search functionality make is very easy to access the valuable tidbit of information that you stored in just in case you needed it someday.

There is a premium version of Evernote that costs $5 per month or $45 per year but to date I have not had the need for the added security and additional storage space that this account offers.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Top 5 Reasons to Use Evernote (chris.pirillo.com)
• 6 Ways To Add Your Information To Evernote (makeuseof.com)
• Evernote now syncs your files across devices (news.cnet.com)

Diigo – Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Social Bookmarking and Annotation, Social Information Network! via kwout

I wrote an article extolling the social bookmarking tool Diigo. In my zeal I left out some really important ways that Diigo can and is used so I thought it was worth a revisit.

Diigo’s tools in a nutshell:

• Research tools

• • tagging
  • list creation
  • persistent highlighting (if you highlight text on a web page it will show up there every time you return and if you make it public anyone else will see it, or only allow people in a group view it instead of the whole world) Try it out yourself by clicking the link no signup required. http://www.diigo.com/04tra
  • persistent commenting (same as the highlights )
  • archiving bookmarks

• Annotation tools
  • persistent highlighting (http://www.diigo.com/04tra)
  • persistant commenting

• Presentation tool
  • Webslides via lists (add bookmarks to a list as well as your own slides. It all plays back to whomever you send the link to with full web interactivity and they don’t even need a Diigo account, check this one out http://slides.diigo.com/list/tylerwall/web20_applications and you can even print it out)
• Social bookmarking tools
  • tagging
  • public and private access to individual bookmarks
  • search engine
  • unread bookmarking functions
  • create bookmark lists
  • share bookmarks to entire groups
  • see bookmarks that your groups post but you retain the right to not bookmark them.
  • discover people who have similar bookmarks, tags, groups
  • show the sites you bookmark most
  • messaging
  • cloud lists
  • Posting to blogs (I posted this article to my blog from Diigo)

There is more but I only have so much space.

So what can an educator use this application for?
Here are some ideas I came up with,

• Use the annotation tools to keep notes for yourself on important websites, I know sometimes its nice going to a website i haven’t seen in a long while and have a few notes or the important text highlighted.
• Make your annotations public and have your students become Diigo members which will allow your
• Create a list of links that are important to a course, this creates a webslide presentation that you can share with whomever you want. This will then bypass deep linking copyright (as far as I understand the copyright laws). The links in the presentation are still navigable and provide students an overview of resources.
• Broaden your knowledge horizon by joining a group. I have found dozens of E-Learning and Education groups which harness the power of the masses by bringing you all the best resources on the web regarding whatever topic you choose.
• Why not create a web research quiz? Set it up like a scavanger hunt by finding a bunch of websites that your students need to do research on and post questions on those sites using the “post it” annotation tool in Diigo. This displays your questions to them on the page that they needed to research which teaches them research skills and they won’t know the question until they do the research.
• Create a group for your whole class and make the research process a group activity spreading the knowledge around.

These are just some ideas that I came up with but the possibilities are there for the taking.

I want to hear about what you use Diigo for or ideas that you may have on how to use it for education.

StumbleUpon: Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web via kwout

StumbleUpon is a personalized discovery engine…say what? It is a tool that helps you discover web sites that you care about. It does this first by you telling it what you are interested in and second by you rating what it finds for you . The more you stumble and rate the more accurate it gets. It chooses websites based on what other people rate as good all according to your interests.  And of course like all good web 2.0 tools there are social aspects like sharing with other stumblers.

Although this could be considered more a distraction than something actually useful but you would have no idea of how many quality website resources from this service.

Check out the product demo here.