From the Desk of Mr Daniel

Twitter has been around for sometime. As our Principal is exploring the possibility of using new media as teaching and learning tools, I start exploring and using it on Friday.

Just for the sake of introduction, Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read short messages (120 - 140 characters) known as tweets. Tweets can be displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Twitter is gaining popularity with the introduction of online services like Twitter.SG, SMSYO & SGBeat. Increasing number of students are using Twitter to communicate. Sending tweets is free but we have to bear the cost of SMSing. To save SMSing, we can integrate Twitter into Facebook and use services like TwitterMail to broadcast your messages. To increase exposure, Twitter can also be displayed at your blog.

Twitter can also be integrated to your Facebook by using Twitter's Facebook Application. Once enabled, you can send tweets using the application. Tweets will appear on your Facebook wall as well as your Twitter profile page.

You can also signup for TwitterMail, which allows you to send tweets using emails. The service supply you with a TwitterMail email address. If you send an email to that address, your email will be posted as tweets to your Twitter profile page.

Twitter can be shown on your blog by placing Twitter Widgets into your blogskin. Your blog readers will be able to see your tweets when they visit your blog. It also serves as an opportunity to allows your friends/readers to subscribe to and follow your Tweets to keep up with the updates in your life.

By integrating Twitter into Facebook and using services like TwitterMail, you can have more than one way to post your Tweets and communicate with your friends. Twitter is useful in sending short messages online while you are on the move. It is the SMS of the internet that allows busy friends to communicate with one another.

I will post about using Web 2.0 tools (which includes Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs etc...) in education, teaching and learning once I finished my research.

I have upgraded my blog's 3 column HTML layout into XML Layout. As promised, this new XML layout is more powerful and easy to edit. Blogger has bring content management system into it's blogging platform.

Initially, the XML coding may be daunting. If you can invest sometime to understand the coding, it will be east to handle. Adding links, photos and other various functionalities (call Gadgets) become as easy as a single click! This time round, I added a flash-based tag cloud, which you can see on your right. Over the next few days, I will add more useful gadgets to this blog.

Let me know which widgets you would like to see on this blog!

I always like 3 column layout. However, my favourite blogger layout is a 2 column layout. Hence, I decided to make some modificaton to turn it into a 3 column layout.

I googled around and saw this website and followed the instructions there. I uploaded the amended layout images to my Google Pages account and edited the CSS to link them to my skin. Next, I change the colour of the Blogger Navbar to silver and make it transparent so that it will merge into the gray background of my current skin design. Finally, I add advertisements from my Google Adsense account to make some money.

Invested the whole Sunday morning but it is worth the effort.

March Holidays are here! Finally, I have the time to do other stuffs apart from giving trainings and lesson plannings.

I have decided to move from my old blog to Blogger. This blog shall be my work blog from now onwards. It shall feature post related to my training career and a portal for my trainees/students to communicate and exchange ideas.