Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional
By Stephen Downes, National Research Council Canada

The following list was inspired by eLearn Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lisa Neal's blog post "Ten Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes To Be a More Successful e-learning Professional." We'd like to offer the "Web 2.0 Edition" of Lisa's list:

1. Listen to a conference presentation. When you run across conference presentations while reading your RSS feeds (EDUCAUSE Connect is a prime source, as is OLDaily), save the conference site as a bookmark and revisit it to hear a presentation.
2. Record a 10-minute presentation about something you are working on or learning about, either as audio (use Odeo) or video (use Ustream), and post it on your blog.
3. Do a search on the title of your most recent post or on the title of the most recent thing you've read or thought about. Don't just use Google search, use Google Blog Search and Google Image Search, Amazon, del.icio.us, Technorati, Slideshare, or Youtube. Scan the results and if you find something interesting, save it in del.icio.us to read later.
4. Write a blog post or article describing something you've learned recently. It can be something you've read or culled from a meeting, conference notes (which you just capture on the fly using a text editor), or a link you've posted to del.icio.us. The trick here is to keep your writing activity to less than 10 minutes—make a point quickly and then click "submit."
5. Tidy your e-portfolio. For example, upload your slides to Slideshare and audio recordings to Odeo and embed the code in your presentation page. Or write a description and link to your latest publication. Or update your project list.
6. Create a slide on Zoho. Just do one slide at a time; find an image using the Creative Commons licensed content on Flickr and a short bit of text from a source or yourself. Add this to your stick of prepared slides you use for your next talk or class.
7. Find a blogger you currently read in your RSS reader and go to their website. Follow all the links to other blogs in their blogroll or feedroll, or which are referenced in their posts. Well, maybe not all the links, or it will take hours, not ten minutes.
8. Write a comment on a blog post, article, or book written by an e-learning researcher or practitioner.
9. Go to a website like Engadget, Metafilter, Digg, Mixx, Mashable, or Hotlinks and skip through the items. These sites produce much too much content to follow diligently, but are great for browsing and serendipitous discovery. If you find something interesting, write a short blog post about it or at least a comment.
10. Catch up on one of your online games with a colleague—Scrabulous on Facebook or Backgammon on Yahoo. Or make a Lolcat. Or watch a Youtube video.

About the Author
Stephen Downes works with the E-Learning Research group of NRC's Institute for Information Technology and is based in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. He spends his time working on learning object and related metadata, blogs, and blogging, RSS and content syndication, and raising cats.

From: Alan Levine (email) the web One Thing eLearn Can Do To Make Their Articles Taggable Date: 03/27/2008 04:40:57 Re #3- Please put article titles inside your TITLE tags. That would save me from tedious copy paste to properly tag this article (which is worthwhile) on social bookmarking sites. Be semantic.   From: kamini (email) yes kamini Date: 03/29/2008 05:40:25 great thing by kameeni   From: johnegood (email) TIme4Learning.com Web 2.0 Awareness is great. But the 10 minute idea is... Date: 04/01/2008 08:36:30 Wonderful list of Web2.0 activities. The 10 minute hook is catchy. But more than just a little optimistic...   From: Lisa Neal (email) eLearn Magazine Response to John about the 10 minute idea Date: 04/01/2008 11:39:07 Actually, John, I think we all (or at least I) waste small amounts of time throughout my day and a list of ideas like this forces me to stay focused on having a sense of personal accomplishment at the end of the day, week, or month. Try it!   From: maike (email) i tried it to become a better web 2.0 learner Date: 05/05/2008 09:00:56 Hello, it is a very great article. After reading i had started my small project "become a better web 2.0 Learner". What i can say now, until now it is impossible for me to do it in 10 minutes. :-) But it is very good way to practise it and to become more active as before.   From: Ray Tolley (email) ICT Education Consultant i tried it to become a better web 2.0 learner Date: 06/09/2008 06:21:24 Hi, Maike, Do not become disillusioned. Your up-hill struggle has two components, (1) developing familiarity with the technologies, (2) as with all new initiatives, there is such a backlog of junk to contend with even before starting to do the real work. Just keep your eyes, firmly on your distant goal!   From: Ric Vatner (email) No Pain - No Gain Web 2 Plan Date: 01/10/2009 12:22:04 Good Ideas but even 10 minutes per task would be optimistic. Yes I know it is a great title and "10 Hours a Day to Web 2 Success" probably wouldn't cut it. Unfortunately, the old adage no pain no gain is still very true today - even on the Internet.

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