Wiki

This definitely sounds like a good idea. I like the fact that information can be changed quickly, that the students can access it anywhere. You could really set up all of the homework for the students to complete (much like the Learning 2.0 set up) and have the students work at their own pace.

The students are also becoming more and more computer literate and it is important that education stays relevant to them. I mean when was the last time that you actually wrote anything down using pen and paper? Or even researched something from a BOOK?

What i would like to know though is in a school situation where we deal with children what are the dos and don'ts. There needs to be a list of things that all teachers need to know. How do we get rid of spam? What photos are acceptable? How do we keep the students safe while working on the internet?

Technorati

The site to find all blogs. It was interesting to have a look through though it does seem a little American, and with such a big population all of the most popular blogs will always be this way. It is a pity therefore that you can limit the search to the country that they users are from. You could then find out what the most popular sites are in Australia. Or can you do this already?

del.ici.ous

I found out how useful this tool is when I was at a friends house and I wanted to get to work on the Learning 2.0 activities and couldn't find the web page. I just access it from my favourites so i never really had to type in the address or anything like that. Needless to say it was the first site i bookmarked in del.ici.ous.
I will be implementing this tool next year when the year six students do their 'my music' assignment. In this activity the students must choose their own song, analyse the music and find information about their chosen artist. As most of this information is new it can only really be found on the net. This brings up a problem when the students go looking for things as band names such as Red Hot Chili Pepers can bring up many different results that are not relevant or even unsavoury, therefore I will be able to prearrange a list of sites that are safe for the students to look at.

Rollyo

This is probably the best thing I have seen so far in terms of school relevance. Students do not really understand how to evaluate relevant websites when they are searching for information. This would allow the students to go to the Rollyo Search that the teacher has created and search from there.
I am currently going through the books on the list of 1001 books to read before you die and so I created a Rollyo search called Book Search. http://www.rollyo.com/aristea/

Instant Sketch Image Generator

I liked Cherie's Simpsonizer blog and tried to check it out in the hope of becoming a Simpson's character myself, but the link didn't work. It may just be because i am trying to do several different things at once. Looks insteresting so I will come back to it at a later date.

Instead I was able to create a sketch from a photo using the Instant Sketch generator. Here is a photo of Richard's cat.

Its quite easy to use, you just click on the link below, upload the photo you would like to create a sketch from and then a few moments later your picture appears as a sketch. Its best to use close ups with contrasting colours. You can then save it to your computer or to Flickr and upload it to your blog. Simple!

http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php

RSS and Newsreaders

There is so much technology around that sometimes you wonder if it is actally making life easier or harder. RSS definately makes it easier. I now just add a site that i continually look at into my Google Reader and i can access all of the new information straight away without having to upload the whole site. As this can be done for mulitple sites i now just visit one place to get everthing.

I found Google Blogsearch the easiest to use in terms of finding and adding blogs. Feedstar was pretty cool as well if your into podcasts.

I will definately keep using this tool in the future.

Trip Planner

The best mashup i found is called Trip Planner. It lets you build a travel itinerary with your hotel, nearby restaurants, attractions, maps, driving directions and heaps more! You can then create a photo set of your trip on Flickr and show them off as part of your trip plan.

If your planning your next holiday and your not too sure where to go, check it out.

http://travel.yahoo.com/