5 of the best things I’ve learnt online this Summer

Since I try and use my blog as a place for my own reflective practice, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been learning recently online.

Best new application

I discovered http://paper.li this summer. The site works much in the same way as The Twitter Times by creating your own online newspaper based on tweets from the people you follow on Twitter. I have been telling lots of people how helpful Twitter Times is for a while and then Paper.li came along. Paper.li is similar but looks a bit funkier. The best thing about it, however, is that you can tell it to send out an automated tweet every day when a new version of your paper is available to view:

This is a great way to promote yourself, your interests and your interesting Twitter friends! The best thing that’s ever happened to me on Twitter happened this week as a result of one of these auto tweets. Margaret Atwood, my favourite author, RETWEETED me! I couldn’t believe it. This one is staying in my favourites for ever:

I’m still totally starstruck by this! So even if you’re not keen on the app, who knows, you may get retweeted by a celebrity!

Best video

I’ve watched a few videos this Summer but this one so far is my favourite. It’s Clay Shirky (a renowned new media/internet expert) talking about what he calls Cognitive Surplus. It’s basically about the power of the internet and social media tools to change the world for good. It’s inspirational and a brilliant argument for engagement in social media.  I’m going to start using it in my training sessions I think.

Best blog

Not work-related this time, but the TV reviews and other funny articles on Hilary Wardle’s blog, Brainsquawks are hilarious. I especially enjoyed her take on the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock . I got into this blog after I saw Hilary’s amazing Twitterthon raising money for Marie Curie.

Best learning-related article

I was intrigued to read about Mark Sample’s framework for teaching with Twitter. I think this is really useful and could have a lot of applications.

Best slideshow

Steve Wheeler’s blog is always worth a read and recently I came across one of his excellent presentations on Slideshare. I hope he adds some audio too. This one is called Web 3.0, the way forward: