Following in the footsteps of teachers such as John Johnston, Sharon Tonner, Adam Sutcliffe, Simon Mills and Kristian Still, I've decided to experiment with the idea of running a Tumbleblog as an electronic aide-mémoire for my main blog using Tumblr and Kwout. An alternative to Del.icio.us, the two tools combine seamlessly together and let you post screenshots with accompanying links straight to the web in a few clicks.
Having signed up for a Tumblr account, you paste the url of the site you want to bookmark into the Demo box on the Kwout site and click kwout. Remember to delete 'http://' first otherwise you'll be sent to the wrong address. You will then see the message Grabbing a medium screenshot and you wait until the page has fully loaded. That done, drag over the area you want to archive (You may need to move the dialogue box to another place on the screen to do this) and click Cut Out. Please note that the highlighted area cannot exceed 600 pixels in either direction.
On the page which then appears (see screenshot below) make sure the radio button next to Post this to your Tumblr is selected and click on Click here to open your Tumblr. Fill in your login details and click the Create Quote button. Your Tumbleblog will then update itself with your new entry.
If you want to add a bookmarklet to your browser to make this process even quicker, you can right click either the link kwout in the same window or kwout in the new window on the Kwout home page. Select Add to Favourites ... and click Yes on the Security Alert dialogue box which appears. In the Add a Favourite box, click on the Create in: drop down menu and select Links. Click Add. Now when you want to Kwout a page, click on the word Kwout on your browser and follow the above procedure. If the page does not appear, you may need to hold down the CTRL key to overide any pop up blockers.
You can also run your Tumbleblog feed through TwitterFeed so any new post automatically appears on your Twitter account. See this post about Mark Pentleton using TwitterFeed for his TwitterLearn project.
In his recent EdTechRoundup podcast with Tom Barrett, John Johnston talks about using Tumbleblogs as a research tool and effective way of collecting links for pupils. In her post Look What I Tumbled Over, Sharon Tonner also suggests how Tumbleblogs can enhance learning, mentioning how The small, simplistic style is perfect for viewing on a mobile device. Mmm ... interesting. Talking of which I ran mine though Mofuse which produced this.
To have a listen to John talking about Tumbleblogs in his ETR podcast and recent Flashmeeting, click on the links below:
Download john_johnston_on_tumbleblogs_from_etr2.mp3
Download john_johnston_on_tumbleblogs_from_etr_fm.mp3
Happy tumbleblogging guys!
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