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Web tools for beginners

Resources to get you started

BY CHRISTINA CHANT | JAN 11 2010

This is a sidebar to A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media.

Ready to start a blog or create your first wiki page? Great! But which option is right for you? With several similar services offered on the web, it can be hard to know which tool is best suited to your needs. Here are some helpful resources to get you comfortable with some of the web tools that are currently available. If you want more information on the functionality of these tools, read our feature article Web tools for neophytes.

People

  • Other faculty. Sidney Eve Matrix, an assistant professor in the Department of film and media at Queen’s University visits other departments within Queen’s University on a consultation basis. Check with the IT, Media or Computing departments at your institution to see if they run similar schemes.
  • Graduate students. Even if they aren’t able to help you to set up systems, they may have an idea of which technologies might be relevant for your courses.
  • Your Teaching and Learning Centre.

Wikis

  • MediaWiki. Educators can apply to have advertisement removed from their wiki.
  • Wikispaces
  • Watch Richard Buckland’s eye-opening lecture about wikis in teaching

Blogs

  • University-hosted options include WordPress multi-user (used by institutions such as UBC and Calgary) and Elgg (used by Athabasca).
  • Google Blogger
  • WordPress
  • Edublogs
  • See how Dr. Marc Spooner runs his course using a blog

Podcasts

  • Investigate ProfCast for a 15-day free trial and educator discounts.

Social Bookmarking

  • Del.icio.us
  • Connotea (bookmarking for researchers, clinicians and scientists)
  • CiteULike (bookmark academic papers)
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