Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute #5: Have you heard of About.me.com?

One of the PIL Institute attendees from the UK, Dan Roberts, had this grand idea to visually collate information about each person attending the Institute before we arrived, and linking it to Bing maps, so that we could get to know something about each other. He suggested we use a website called About.me.com to write a bit about ourselves. I thought this was a great idea. You can sign up to this free website (About.me.com) and write something about yourself and how to contact you, and you can add a photo background. It literally takes 5 minutes. So, we were asked to create one and put the link in our teacher learning community website. The person who suggested this, Dan, has a really interesting profile. http://about.me/chickensaltash. Well, I tried it out and signed up http://about.me/fionabeal What was interesting, I thought, was the way Dan linked these profiles to a Bing map so that we could see the spread of teachers and where they come from. You can view this on http://binged.it/mVOYKh. Once you click on the person’s name you can click on 'more info' and you’ll be taken to their about.me page. Dan is still adding details of everyone, but as he says, it is a great way to visually connect and possibly even collaborate in the future. Oh gosh, I love innovative approaches to things…