As fast as I learn about one particular app- a new one moves across the blogosphere and is the flavour of the month. Diigo is the new killer app in terms of what it can do and twitter is running hot with conversations about the pros and cons and lots of tips and hints to make it more effective. It seems to combine the best parts of Del.icio.us as a bookmarking and tagging and sharing tool, the social capabilities for connecting and chatting as Facebook and Twitter, as well as some other new capabilities which appear to make it a very powerful app. Kristin Hokansen has written a really detailed post examining the potential of the program and Liz Davis has made a great screencast which takes you through the basics. I have had a play and I am excited by the idea of the group which will be like a ning I imagine but a bit different. Feeling very forthright, I created a group for Australian Educators and NZ ones too and called it Oz Educators in the hope that the rapidly increasing number of teachers in the Southern Hemisphere can start making some connections and finding resources appropriate to our schools and teaching experience. The voice from the Northern Hemisphere is a very strong one and we also need to develop our own one. Jo Mcleay has had the idea of some kind of show like WOW 2.0 but for the southern Hemisphere, and this is a start at building this. We already have 24 members and there are lots of familiar and also several unfamiliar names, evidence of how these tools of twitter and Diigo are expanding and contracting the network of teachers by bringing them closer.There are a number of other areas of Diigo I have yet to explore like some of the highlighting and notetaking functions, but it will happen.
On a sadder note Nikki -one of my darling Redpoint Siamese cats is failing fast as he is struck down by a kidney problem that he had when younger which has been kept in abeyance up till now, but his age and the heat of summer and the sudden cold has made flare up again very badly. He has lost lots of weight and after tests today there is not much that can be done; we are trying to make him as comfortable as possible.He is nine years old now and he and his brother have been such a wonderful part of our lives - siamese twins who rule the house.