Although we have covered Delicious in our Featured Technology section in the past, in the last few years it has undergone so many changes that we thought we should revisit this topic.

As a teacher, Delicious can become an easy way to share resources with colleagues. You can each set up an account and create a network. You can also use Delicious with learners, setting up a classroom account in which students can save their bookmarks while working on a specific project, for example.

Google Calendar lets you organize your schedule online. One of many applications available through a Gmai account – such as Documents, Sites, Maps, Images, and many more – it lets you keep track of your own events and share your calendars with others. 

With its simple-to-use interface, it is also a great tool to help literacy students manage their time, plan meetings and get organized.

I started using Pocket when it was still known as ‘Read it later.’ As the name implied, it allowed me to save content and explore it at a time more convenient for me. It quickly became one of my favourite tools that I referred to on a regular basis. 

Since I manage AlphaPlus’ website and social media tools, I come across interesting news, updates, links, announcements, documents, videos and other content on a daily basis. With other projects, meetings and assignments, I often don’t have time to read and explore this wealth of information on the spot and that’s when Pocket becomes handy.

The Dropbox tag line is “Simplify your life” and that is exactly and literally what it has done for me! First of all it is super easy to use – I just opened a free account, got my own Dropbox and now I use it to store files, documents, images, and videos. Best of all I can access them from anywhere, share them with friends and colleagues, and I can sync them on all my mobile devices.

Dropbox is a free storage service that lets you save and access all your files, including photos, documents, and videos, in a cloud and access them from all your computers and phones and even from the Dropbox website.

When you visit the Dropbox site, you will be invited to download Dropbox software. It will allow you to install Dropbox on your computer and to create a Dropbox folder that automatically syncs with your online Dropbox account.

RSS feeds, often represented by big orange icons on websites, are convenient, time-saving tools that help deliver content to website users.

What makes them unique is that instead of the user going to different sites, the content is brought to the user.

For example, a teacher interested in new resources or activities who regularly visits multiple websites to check if something new is posted, could instead subscribe to RSS feeds from these sites and automatically receive updates whenever new information is added. These updates would be delivered to the teacher’s feed reader or news aggregator, a tool that organizes and displays summaries from various feeds.

Pinterest is the latest social media hype. Described as an online pinboard to organize and share the things you love, Pinterest had almost 12 million unique visitors in January, even with its beta stage and invitation-only registration.

The premise is simple. You sign up for an account using your Facebook or Twitter account, set up various categories to organize the images or videos onto virtual boards, browse through other people’s pinnned content and when you like something you find, you can “repin” it to your board, “like” it or “comment” on it.

I stumbled onto Glogster while perusing one of my favorite resource websites, Go2Web20. I had casually dabbled in WebQuests and “choose your own adventure” type activities, but I was immediately drawn to the visual and creative nature of Glogster. Glogster is an interactive, media- rich “poster” that invites users to integrate images, video, audio and many Web 2.0 programs that can be found on the Internet. These posters are used worldwide by teachers and students to create personal posters, lesson plans, and professional development glogs for anyone to explore. 

Dr. Rory McGreal of Athabasca University and AlphaPlus’s own Maria Moriarty presented at the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities on Monday, May 16, 2011.

HootSuite is a social media dashboard that helps you to consolidate, update and track what’s going on in your social network circle – all from one single location.

Many literacy practitioners and organizations have set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon and other sites to stay in touch, share information and connect with others. But managing those sites isn’t easy and can get very time consuming.