No matter in what field you work, nowadays an internet identity is indispensable.

First, start by creating a LinkedIn account.  http://www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn has over 60 million members in almost every country in the world.  This is the most important resource for professionals to build contacts.
You can join groups and thus find people in your field.  You can also recommend other people and get recommended.  LinkedIn offers many other functionalities such as resume databases, job listings, and file sharing.

Once you created your LinkedIn profile, you should start a blog or a website.  I suggest you use the very reliable WordPress.com.  This is a free tool that allows you to have your own domain and does not display any ads.  I recommend that you create a domain using your full name, such as sylviasmith.wordpress.com.  You should use your WordPress blog to write articles about topics in your field.  Make sure you use tags for your posts so that search engines such as Google can find you more easily.

Finally, you should take the last and easiest step which is to create a Twitter account.  Make sure, just like with your WordPress.com domain, to create a user name consisting of your first and last names.  Your Twitter page will then be http://twitter.com/sylviasmith.  Twitter is a microblogging tool.  You can write a microblog or very short post containing up to 140 characters.  You can find people to follow at http://listorious.com.  You should start by following as many experts in your filed as you can.  You can only read tweets at the beginning and then start retweeting.  When you feel confident with Twitter etiquette, you should start tweeting.  Be aware that unlike Facebooks, your tweets are plublic, and anyone could read them.

A last tip, leave traces!  When you are online, remember to leave as many traces as you can. Make sure that these traces portray you accurately and professionally. For instance, try to participate in forums, write reviews and comments, and post answers (in Yahoo Answers for instance). People performing searches on you, will find the content you posted and learn about your involvement and knowledge.

Streaming live video with my iPhone using Qik, a jewel! http://qik.com/imwinkelried

Etherpad does not take you to the Heavens, but it comes very close to it

I had been using Etherpad –http://www.etherpad.com–for a while, but had never experimented its potential as a collaborative tool in the classroom.

Etherpad is one of the best online-based word processors out there not only because it is free (and now open source since Google acquired it) but also because it enables users to create a public pad without having to sign up for an account.  Etherpad has many other wonderful features such as easy sharing, author colors and timeslider with different formats to save to.

Perhaps the most important feature for me is to be able to use an online-based word processor that I do not have to sign up for nor sign in.  Google Documents is great, but I need to sign in in order to access their word processor.  With Etherpad, I am only a click away from starting to type my document.

As soon as users create their public pad, Etherpad gives them a URL that users can email or IM to their collaborators.

Users have their texts highlighted with different colors and their names show up on the sidebar, also provided with a chat tool.

The Timeslider tool enables users to slide through the history of the document.  They can do this manually or by hitting play, and watching the history of the collaboration develop.  Etherpad offers several formats to save your document including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, or Plain Text.

Today, my first-year journalism students took full advantage of this great tool.  They wrote articles individually that they later shared with the rest of the class as they joined the public pad that I projected on the screen to the entire class.

The students would correct their documents themselves and also their classmates’.  The group-correction process is already a very rich one, and Etherpad only enhances it by the color-identity feature–students and teacher can make corrections and the student can easily identify the corrector by the color.

Students could eventually save the document so that they can review the corrections.

We ended the class with two presentations.  Presenters used Etherpad to write their keywords.  The rest of the class wrote notes and questions for the presenters using the Etherpad public document.

Etherpad is a free and no-signup-necessary application that offers plenty of possibilities including collaborative writing via sharing URL, highlighted text with a different color per user, a slick Timeslider tool to navigate through the document history, and plenty of formats to save your document.

Etherpad does not take you to the Heavens, but to heights with a great potential to be explored.

With Pixlr, Who Needs Photoshop?

Pixlr is an online photo editor with a vast potential.  Certainly not for those with printing needs, but for those designing for the web Pixlr may become a better option than Photoshop.  Pixlr is not only free, but also web-based (no need to install anything on your computer nor to keep up with updates), and you do not even need to create an account to work with it.  In addition, there is a bonus, an extension you can install on your browser called Pixlr Grabber.

Many web-based photo editors require you to register.  With Pixlr, you can start editing your images with a browser and an internet connection.

Pixlr has three applications, Pixlr Editor, Express and Grabber.  Editor is almost like Photoshop, Express is to perform quick edits, and Grabber is a very handy extension you install in your browser to have ready acces to online images.  With Grabber, you have three capturing options, entire page, a selection, or the visible area of a page.

Pixlr Editor looks  very similar to Photoshop and has almost all the same basic functions and toolbar.  Pixlr also has Layers, History, and Navigation windows.  The text tool is also very powerful with a considerable library of fonts.

To start working, you can open an image from your computer or directly from a URL (you can also create a new image from scratch).  When you finished editing, you can save the result to your computer just as if you were working with Photoshop or any other application installed on your computer.

So, if you create web content, you should certainly give Pixlr a try.  You do not need to open an extra application, just open a new tab, type pixlr.com and start working.

Other web-based photos editors reviewed here http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10170333-2.html

 

Belgian Bells: Creative Commons Music Library

Electrobel.be is one of the largest Creative Commons contemporary music libraries I know of and certainly the European leader. Yet, Electrobel.be remains largely unknown to many listeners and producers.
Electrobel.be is a Belgian site that features original music composed primarily by Belgian musicians.  In addition to its Electrobel.be site, Electrobel has other sites dedicated to musicians from other nationalities,  UK, French, Italian, and Dutch branches.
This site offers a wealth of music that could be used for different purposes since their tracks are free to use and released under a CC license. Video makers, podcasters, screencasters and other producers could take full advantage of these easily downloadable tracks.
Electrobel.be’s thousands tracks are organized by genres from hip hop to breakcore and acousmatic.
Users do not need to sign in to download their mp3 tracks. They can access the player by simply clicking on a track or the “listen to all” button at the end of every page.
The quality of Electrobel.be’s tracks varies, but for the most part they are seriously made and showcased on the site looking for feedback and support from other fellow musicians. As they state on their site, “Electrobel is far more than just your local MP3-host. Electrobel is a living community bringing together artists and fans, organising music events, coordinating mutual help and promoting the independent music culture across Europe.” (www.electrobel.be)
Electrobel.be also has its own label Netlabel, which has already released over fifteen albums since 2006, also downloadable from their site http://www.netlabel.be
Producers and listeners need yet to discover this wealth of content and high-quality tracks free to download and use.
Visit Electrobel.be and get started http://www.electrobel.be

Know-how and Content Worth

“I can’t publish!”
Once I teach my students about online tools and they are all ready to go, many of them tell me that they can’t publish. They feel what they have to say does not merit publishing because nobody would be interested in reading it.
This is when I realized that teaching online publishing and marketing tools was not only about having my students learn the know-how, but that it was more complex than that.
Once my students overcome all technical difficulties and are finally ready to press de WordPress’ blue button labeled “Publish,” many of them, believe the content of their publication will be of no interest to anyone.
I finally realize that teaching the need of a tools does not only involve teaching students how this tool can help them, but also making them understand that what they have to say matters.
This is yet, a third step that I need to accomplish in order to make my students successfully use online tools for publication and marketing.

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A Website, A Showcase, A Vault

Wordpress.com, the safety of a vault

“I’ve done that, but don’t know where it is!”  Many times, I ask my students if they have made a video, written an article or a CV.  Most of them have, but some or many of them are unable to show me the document or item they have spent so much time producing–they have simply lost it or misplaced it.

I find that a website could work not only as a showcase but also as vault to save almost any work students produce in a centralized manner.

There are many advantages to this approach.

• Once you put an item online, it is rather easy to retrieve it since you could use one single site to centralize all your documents.  You would no longer have some articles on a CD, others in your computer, a poster you designed in your friend’s computer, etc.
• You have a very reliable backup just in case you lose all copies (mainly if you have Wordpres.com site)
• You can readily show people your work and share it with eventual collaborators by adding them as a user of your website or CMS
• A WordPress.com site would accept almost any sort of items including videos, songs, interviews, photos, drawings, PDFs, and certainly text
• You can set items to private and public, having full control over what you wish to share/show

WordPress.com offers all the advantages listed above and many more.

I strongly recommend to encourage students to use WordPress.com to showcase their work as well as to manage their work in a centralized fashion.

Discussing the Importance of the Tool Before Teaching the Tool Itself

How will WordPress help my career?  This is the question I many times encounter when telling

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my students they should create a website or a WordPress. com site.  If I ask them to create a WordPress.com website as a homework assignment, some of them even tell me that they will not do their homework because they do not want to have a website.

These responses taught me that I was taking much for granted.

What I have learned is that I should make sure I thoroughly introduce the tool first and only once my students have a proper understanding of the usefulness of a given tool, I should go to the hands-on assignment.

For instance, if you want your students to make a podcast, you should first make sure they understand what the practical use of podcasts is.  If they study marketing, communication, or business, then you should talk about the importance of podcasts as a marketing tool.  If they study journalism, you should make sure your students understand how through podcasts, they could showcase they work and actually start a journalistic career there and then through the publication of audio programs, commentaries, interviews, etc.

A good video tutorial explaining the use of some basic and free online tools including article-marketing, forum-marketing, and video-marketing is “Where Can You Advertise Your Business For Free on the Internet-The Top 3 Ways” by Jared Wiener.  A “Case Study: Blogging Works Even For A Gunsmith” is a video discussing the importance of WordPress as a marketing tool by Bill Seaver of MicroExplosion Media.

To sum up, make sure your students understand how a tool can help them accomplish what they want to accomplish or what the exact practical potential of that tool is.  Only once your students thoroughly understand this, you should introduce them to the tool itself.