Comprehensive Web 2.0 resource

I came across a very comprehensive resource for teaching and learning with Web 2.0 tools. It contains information about everything from blogs to podcasts to wikis to digital storytelling to resources like Animoto and Jing and Photo Story… It also provides resources for issues related to copyright and cybersafety.

State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report

Technorati has conducted their annual survey since 2004 to discover trends and themes in blogging. However, in 2008, they went beyond the numbers in the Technorati Index and surveyed more than 1.2 million bloggers who have registered with Technorati about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially. The Report was released over a series of days, covering these topics.

• Introduction
• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

Who are the bloggers?

Wikipedia defines blogs as:

• A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
• The Blogosphere collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.. Discussions "in the Blogosphere" have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues.

Sloan-C resources

I have been using the resources provided by the Sloan Consortium for my doctoral research, especially Sloan-C's Effective Practices site. The Sloan-C community shares techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for them. All effective practices are peer reviewed to both insure quality and to give submitters some documentation for tenure and promotion files."

Search categories for the site:
- Search by Pillar allows you to search by the five Sloan-C pillars, the building blocks of quality online education -- learning effectiveness, scale, access, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction -- and/or subcategories within them.
- Search by Context allows you to search by your perspectives (roles) in online learning, organizational type, or subject area domain, as well as by special cases of online learning (such as online collaboration, or large class size), and/or by subcategories within these.
- Search by Technology allows you to search by particular technology categories -- audio, video, synchronous, asynchronous, mobile, virtual, and digital resources -- and/or by subcategories within them.
- What's New returns the most recent effective practices added to the site.