Internet - Every 60 Seconds. The Internet in a minuite. Blogs. You've seen the word, you've seen the web sites and you may even have one.
But have you ever wondered: What's the big deal about blogs? To make sense of blogs, you have to think about the news and who makes it. We'll look at news in the 20th vs. the 21st century to make our point. In the 20th century, the news was produced professionally. When news happened, reporters wrote the stories and a tiny group of people decided what appeared in a newspaper or broadcast.
The 21st century marked the point where news became both professional and personal. As blogs became popular, they created millions of news sources and gave everyone an audience for their own version of news. With a blog...A business owner can share news about his business A mother can share news about her family Or a sport star can share news with fans These people are all "bloggers". How did this happen?
Blogs are websites that are organized by blog posts - these are individual news stories, like articles in the paper. Social Networking. Networks get things done.
Whether it's sending a letter or lighting your home. Networks make it happen. To get from Chicago to Santa Fe, we need to see the network of roads that will get us there. We see that Chicago is connected to St Louis, which is connected to Dallas, which is connected to Santa Fe. Of course, people networks can help us with finding jobs, meeting new friends, and finding partners. The problem with social networks in the real world is that most of the connections between people are hidden.
Twitter. So, what are you doing?
It's one of the first questions we often ask friends and family. Even if the answer is just mowing the lawn or cooking dinner, it's interesting to us. It makes us feel connected and a part of each other's lives. Unfortunately, most of our day-to-day lives are hidden from people that care. Booooo! Online Photo Sharing. When asked what should be saved in a fire, along with family and pets, people often choose photos.
If photos mean a lot to you, it's time to learn why keeping them on the web makes sense. As you know, cameras and photography have changed. What used to appear on paper, now appears on computers and phones. No matter the format, we still love our photos and now they they have new powers. First, let's be practical. Now, because photos can be uploaded to a web site, all sorts of cool things are possible.
You visit the Grand Canyon and take beautiful photos. Now, let's look at the new way with a popular service I use called Flickr. You visit the Grand Canyon and take beautiful photos with a digital camera. But it doesn't stop there. Now, once your photos are online and findable, it's time to look at another fun part of online photo sharing - the actual sharing. So, try sharing your online photos with the public. So, photo sharing sites like Flickr do two things really well: Social Bookmarking. It's just too much.
Did you know that there are over 15 billion web pages? To make sense of it all, we need to pluck out the best pages and save them for later. We have choices. We could bookmark or add to favorites in our web browser. Nah, it quickly becomes messy. There's a new way that doesn't use a browser. We'll focus on three things: How to get started with bookmarking, how bookmarks are organized by tags, and why this kind of bookmarking is social. First, go to delicious.com to sign up for a free account. Consider this example, you are a teacher who often uses the web to find math lessons for 8th graders. Here's what happens when you tag a site: a new window opens and asks for more information. When you save a page like this, two things happen. Let's fast forward two months to make our second point: Why tags are so important. To find all your sites about algebra, you click the algebra tag, and voila, one hundred becomes three.
Comunication in the news. Granny army helps India's school children via the cloud. 30 April 2012 Last updated at 04:33 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter Jackie Barrow explains how she teaches children thousands of miles away No-one does love and encouragement better than a granny. Now that love is being spread across continents, as UK-based grandmothers extend their embrace to school children thousands of miles away in India. Jackie Barrow isn't a granny yet but as a retired teacher she felt she might qualify for an advert in The Guardian newspaper calling for volunteers to help teach children in India. She did and today, three years on, she is reading "Not Now Bernard" via Skype to a small group of children in the Indian city of Pune.
They love it and are engaged in the experience as she holds up an Easter egg to show them how children in the UK celebrated the recent holiday. Advice and praise The Granny Cloud project is the brainchild of Prof Sugata Mitra, best-known for his hole-in-the-wall computer scheme which put basic PCs into some of the poorest parts of India. Free Skype internet calls and cheap calls to phones online.