Search - what you probably never knew about Searching, but should

I was reading Tony Karrer's blog the other day. He had written a post on using Search and ways to improve your search techniques. In this post he shared some of his tips on how to use search, especially those times that you need information and need more than what Google can provide. It was part of his Tool Set series, which includes several other great posts, but I found this post to be the most helpful to me out of all of them.

In it he discusses what you can find with Google, and why you might need to use other search engines based on what you're looking for. I won't spoil it for you as he does a much better job of writing about it than I could on rehashing what he said. However, what I will say is that if you only use one search engine (probably Google), that's fine for most searches, but you should get more skilled at using Google and consider using other search engines as well. For a great listing of alternative search engines, check out the Digital Research Tools Wiki, specifically, the Data Visualization and Visual Search Tools pages. There are a lot of other resources listed here as well, so worth checking out.

I have some learning to do now, because I, like most people, am generally a pretty lazy internet search user and could use more practice on how to be more efficient and effective when I do a search.

Twitter Newbie!

Yes, I am a Twitter newbie. You would think that I would have tried this a long time ago, and I will admit that I was tempted, but due to an old mobile phone and not really understanding it, I didn't actually start using it for quite some time.

I finally started trying to use it at the DevLearn08 conference, since I had upgraded to an iPhone earlier this year. I managed OK, but found there was quite a bit I didn't know. So I dropped off for a while, but I am trying again and have been searching for some reliable resources to get more information.

For those that are interested, here's what I've found:

• The Twitter Fan wiki has a good section for Newbies, including etiquette - a nice touch.
• Sue Waters (an Edublogger with lots of web 2.0 experience) wiki on Personal Learning Networks has a nice Twitter page with links to good apps to use as well as good ideas about how to be professional in using Twitter. Since she writes for educators who want to use Twitter in their classes, it's probably good enough for all us other professionals as well!
• For those of you in the instructional design realm, you may want to check out the Social Learning Question of the Day and follow the SLQOTD group on Twitter. It's been a good way for me to get enough tweets to start figuring out how to use it best, and it's been interesting as well!
• Use an app like Twitterific or Twinkle on your phone. I'm trying both out on my iPhone, but am leaning towards Twitterific (somewhat easier to use), although both are very good apps and both have a free version. I'm also using Twitterific on my mac, much easier than trying to use the Twitter website to keep up with things during the day. (Note: there are many good apps out there now, so pick one you like and start using it!)
  

I hope that with my new apps to play with and having some interesting tweets to track, I'll soon be getting better at this! And if you're interested, you can find me on Twitter too!

Blogging Doesn't Hurt

So at yesterday's keynote address at the DevLearn 2008 conference, they started out by asking everyone in the audience to turn to someone else and tell them what they learned from the day before. My comment to the person in front of me was that "Blogging doesn't hurt!"

He looked at me with a rather puzzled look and I explained that, as someone new to blogging, it can be intimidating and that some people find this "painful". That seemed to be a good enough explanation for him. He even asked if he could use that in his work. I agreed. I think this is something people need to know. It's not scary, nothing bad is going to happen when you push the "publish post" button.

And in case you were wondering who the gentleman was that asked to use this phrase, go check out this blog: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/. The man's name is Dr. Tony Karrer and he is the kind of exceptional elearning leader that I was hoping to find in coming to DevLearn this year. He has an amazing collection of elearning blogs and posts very thorough and relevant information here. I will definitely be checking this out regularly and will have new resources to explore for quite some time to come.

If you'd like to hear him in person, he will be presenting at next week's Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 online conference. It's free and I highly recommend Mr. Karrer's presentation, Work Literacy - Implications for Learning Professionals. Check out the information here http://www.learntrends.com/. It's co-hosted by another favorite resource of mine, Jay Cross, and George Siemens of the Learning Tech Center at the University of Manitoba.

I don't know if I will have time to check in to the other sessions offered, but will be following these thought leaders for some time to come. Makes that $1095 all worthwhile. :)