Informal Learning 2: Drinking from a Fire Hydrant - How to Tap

into the Information Stream

Stan Skrabut@skrabut #UWCESskrabut@uwyo.eduhttp://www.slideshare.net/skrabut

Information is available everywhere.

You are a professional eager to stay abreast of new information.

It is time consuming to hunt out the latest information.

You would like to get through all of your favorite sites with minimal time and effort.

Let me show you how to quickly stay current using three great tools.

Rather than visit favorite Web sites

separately, subscribe to their RSS feeds using a tool like Google

Reader.

Rich simple syndication (RSS) is a method to subscribe to news and blog feeds.

The key to finding an RSS feed is looking for an image that looks like one of these.

There are a number of directories to help you locate great resources to follow.

The key to using RSS feeds is to Subscribe to them.

Locate your information stream, and add it to your subscriptions.

Organize your feeds according to your needs.

Add tools to your phone, iPad, and browser to be able to tap into your feeds anytime and anywhere.

Here are suggestions for starting your RSS feed collection.

Subscribe to bloggers who are leaders in your field.

Subscribe to news outlets with honed queries to information relevant to you.

Subscribe to research journals through search queries.

If you are looking for the most current

information, tap into the third most popular search engine – Twitter.

In order to learn how to leverage Twitter, you must first understand the tool.

Twitter is equivalent to a radio broadcasting station.

You can send Tweets through countless devices and applications.

Twitter has a powerful search engine.

Get the most out of Twitter through third party applications.

Use tools like HootSuite or Tweetdeck to save search queries for regular updates.

Subscribe to or create your own newspaper with Paper.li.

Add tools to your phone, iPad, and browser to be able to tap into your feeds anytime and anywhere.

Here are suggestions for some Twitter feeds to follow.

You and your students can follow subject matter experts.

You can also follow trending subjects using queries.

You can follow the proceeds of a conference by following a hashtag.

You can participate in Twitterchats through preassigned hashtags.

Diigo will help you collect and

organize all the great items you

find through Twitter and RSS

feeds.

Diigo is a link bookmarking service located in the cloud.

To get the most out of Diigo, first create an account and install the toolbar, diigolet, or extension.

To see bookmarks on the road, load the Diigo application for your iPhone or iPad.

Once your tools have been added, you can customize them for your convenience.

Here are the basics of capturing bookmarks using Diigo.

When you find a Web site you want to bookmark, you select bookmark from the Diigo Web highlighter.

With Diigo, it is possible to highlight text in a Web site in four different colors.

You can also add sticky notes to your pages; these can be public, private, or group specific.

There are a number of ways to search for bookmarks.

You can find bookmarks by searching for a tag.

You can do a full test search for your bookmarks.

You can search your lists for bookmarks.

You can also see all the links from the same site.

You can add power by using others to find resources for you.

Benefit from people you trust by networking with them.

There are groups of individuals who share like-minded bookmarks.

Here are the sessions scheduled for the next five months.

Individual Strategies

Collection Strategies

Interpersonal Strategies

Creation Strategies

Organizational Strategies

Questions?

Informal Learning 2: Drinking from a Fire Hydrant - How to Tap

into the Information Stream

Stan Skrabut@skrabut #UWCESskrabut@uwyo.eduhttp://www.slideshare.net/skrabut