David Warlick presented at our District Focus Day today. What a great 5 hours this was! Yes, 5 hours with David Warlick. To say that many of us, okay, probably just me, were overwhelmed at the end of David’s presentation is probably an understatement. I took 16 pages of notes. Not sure why I took so many notes, because he gives us a link to his presentation, but I guess I just like taking notes. I think it helps me process information.
With 5 hours of information and 16 pages of notes, I can’t possibly do only one blog post on our Focus Day today. It will have to be multiple blog posts (not sure how many)…
Part 1 – Gathering Information
David Warlick talked a great deal about the abundance of information we have today. He demonstrated this abundance by showing us one page on the website, Personalize Media, entitled, The Count. On this page, there is an ongoing count of all information shared, tweeted, watched, joined, downloaded and posted in all areas of social media. Take a look at the link, it is quite something!
So, how do we deal with all this information, you might wonder? Yes, it is overwhelming, but David discussed with us a few ways we could manage this information.
We have all been to google and done a search for some sort of information we are looking to find out more about. The google search usually gives millions of results to your chosen search topic. There are other, more effective ways to search for information, according to David Warlick. You might want to try some of the following search engines which have already been curated and recommended by others (unlike google):
Technorati – Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword.
Blekko – Web Search Engine
Topsy.com – Real Time Search for the social web.
Delicious – Social Bookmark sharing site – where you can house your bookmarks and also search others.
Diigo – Social Bookmark sharing site where you can highlight and sticky note blogs or articles you bookmark.
Flickr – Photo sharing site. If you want to use photos of others, please remember copyright rules and regulations. You can find some great images that you are free to share by going to the Creative Commons section of Flickr. The owners of all of these photos have agreed with the use of them by others.
iGoogle – You can add RSS feeds that will show up on your iGoogle page (which you could make as your home page).
Flipboard on iPad – Personal Newsmagazine of all the latest posts from your PLN or all the blogs you may be following.
Google Reader – You could also set up the blogs you follow into Google Reader.
As you can see, there are many different ways to gather the abundance of information we are presented with on a daily basis on the world-wide-web. Some of these search engines were search engines I had never heard about before today. I look forward to giving them a try.
I hope you find this information interesting and useful.
What are some ways you gather information online?
What works for you?
Flickr image by robpatrick on flickr.
There will be a few more blog posts about our time with David Warlick. Stay tuned….
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