Twitter & TweetDeck

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I have recently started tweeting again and have connected with numerous teachers and administrators across the U.S. I honestly never saw a point to twitter until recently. You see, I am currently taking courses in the Educational Leadership M.Ed. program at UNLV. I often have assignments that involve interviewing administrators and twitter has allowed me to "tweet" with the brightest minds across the nation. To me, this is a huge advantage as all I have to do is perform a simple twitter search and find numerous results. Most people on twitter have been happy to help me out and have provide excellent insight as to how schools are run outside of Las Vegas valley.

Not completely enjoying the "web-based" environment of twitter, I found TweetDeck.com. Upon downloading and logging in to my twitter account, I was greated with this UI:


If you're looking to simplify your twitter experience, I strongly suggest looking into TweetDeck. You will notice that it puts your Friends' tweets, your Replies, and your Direct Messages into three easy to follow columns. You even have the ability to TwitPics, shorten URLs, and perform twitter searches all inside of TweetDeck. I will never have to log in to the website again...

Oh, and in case you are wondering, I can be found on twitter as MrDooley and usually tweet with hashtags such as #edutech, #education, #teacher, and #teaching.

FaceBook hacks

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{update 5/20/09: see my new blog post on FaceBook Hacks 2}

Check out the link to 101 FaceBook Hacks for college kids. Some interesting stuff in there, here's a highlight:

• Sketch Me: turn your profile pic into a pencil sketch.
• Stu.dicio.us: get together with other students and share notes for classes (looks like it's on vacation).
• ScrapBoy: integrates your FaceBook into your computers desktop.
• Music Player: integrate and upload music to your page.
• FaceBook for Firefox: adds custom toolbar to your browser.
• Mac FB Widget: add a widget to your Mac's dashboard

Just some of my favorites...check out the list for the other 95!

Animoto Vid

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To follow-up on the latest New Tek post, here's a quick vid I created using Animoto...enjoy!

PS - this took all of five minutes!

New blog layout...

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Thanks to the good people over at BloggerTricks.com, I've got a beautiful new layout that is easier to read and allows for a nice magazine-type display. If you're looking for a new layout, check them out. They have done an excellent job providing detailed instructions to upload the templates and edit.

New Tek

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Ever wanted to say good bye to boring slideshow presentations? Well, check out animoto.com and say hello to a real PowerPoint slayer. Animoto has done an excellent job integrating Web 2.0 with video animation just like you see in the movies. Visit their site, join for free, and give it a test run. You won't be disappointed!

PS - If you're an educator, check out their Education page. They will give you free access to full-length videos!

New Tek: Top 10 Tools for Coaches

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As a coach and Computer Science teacher, I often try to intertwine the two. I do this by creating team websites where parents and players can view schedules, results, stats, and locations of our games. I have used eteamz in the past with the free team account. Eteamz is pretty easy to use and has a lot of functions that keep the players, parents and coaches in contact. However, the major drawback is the options I want to use (in essence making my job easier) always require a paid membership. When coming across the Mashable article Top 10 Tools for Soccer Moms and Weekend Warriors, I was excited to see that there are eteamz competitors (as well as other tools) that I can use for free. I'll be checking out TeamSnap in hopes of finding a nice all-in-one (and free) tool for the online management of my teams! Here's hoping you do the same.

New Tek - PictureTrail.com

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I have been using numerous online photo-sharing sites based on my needs and their capabilities. I have used photobucket, dropshots, flickr, and lately picturetrail. PictureTrail seems to be my favorite lately, so I wanted to post a quick blog entry about it and what it can do for you.

Not only can you upload photos and share them with friends and family, you can create "flicks" which are animated slideshows of your albums. Their web-based software does all of the work and spits out the code for users to paste into their FaceBook, MySpace, Blogger, etc. PictureTrail flicks has a nice user interface, simple, and easy to follow directions. Here is a recent flick I made for Ethan: