Liz Davis, who’s part of my del.icio.us network, has put together this video on Del.icio.us networks.

At an inservice yesterday, we were introduced to some very cool Bible software. Online Bible is a great package that includes a couple of different versions, some commentaries, and a couple of devotionals. There are expansion modules you can download to add a couple of more Bible versions and commentaries.

This is all free, so naturally most of the Bible versions are dated since they need to be in the public domain. While that means a bit of old fashioned English in your Bible translations, this is more than made up for by how searchable the whole package is. You can search for phrases, ideas, and can even find “Strong’s reference numbers” in the package.

If you’re doing research for your Bible class or trying to learn more in order to integrate your faith into your other lessons, this is a great (and free) little piece of software.

Twitter is one of the up and coming cool web based applications. It’s a bit of an odd site. You type in short phrases or “tweets” about what you’re doing (“On the phone.” “Doing laundry.” “Gotta mark exams.”) and then friends, family, acquaintances or even total strangers have the chance to read them and respond. It all feels a little nosey to me, and even a a bit voyeuristic. Despite this, it’s a great way to keep in touch with friends and other people on the Internet that might catch your interest.

Twitter could be useful in an educational setting, especially if you’re working in distance ed with students in multiple locations. The kids could keep in easy touch with each other, post questions, and get nearly immediate feedback from their classmates.

The big problem with Twitter from an educational point of view is that everything that happens is very public. When you’re dealing with students under 18 who sometimes (despite your best efforts as the teacher) post inappropriate or revealing details about themselves, public is something you can’t afford your class chatter to be.

WordPress, the world’s greatest blogging software comes charging in to the rescue. The folks at Automattic who developed Twitter have also developed a new theme for it. Prologue turns your regular blog into a remarkable imitation of Twitter. The difference is that you decide who can be a member of your own private Twitter and therefore who posts.

While you can decide who posts, your discussions are still public and you probably don’t want that either. There is still hope, because there’s a nifty little plug-in that can make your blog totally private so  registered users only can see what’s posted on your blog.

If you get the  Prologue theme and the privacy plug-in all set up (and it’s not too hard if you’re a tiny bit of a computer geek, or if you have one handy you can impose on), you then have your own, private version of Twitter for whatever nefarious ends you might have.

I’ve been having fun lately discovering videos on YouTube that I can use in my courses. For example, there are a host of commercials that give clues on Canadian identity.

However, not all videos are good. When I was doing my education degree, they warned us to never, ever, ever show a video to a class that we hadn’t previewed. This video, a Brief History of the United States in 3 Minutes, is a case in point. Those it’s funny as anything (and you can largely figure it out even though it’s in French) it’s hopelessly lopsided in its portrayal of American history. I suppose it’d be a great video to watch if you were going to talk about bias in your sources.

Web Tools for the class are cool, but you still need to treat them with caution.

I found a great biology site. The Visible Body is a 3-D rendering of the human body that can be viewed from different angles. You can add different systems (muscles, circulatory, etc) onto a sketeton and take them off to give you a clear idea how all the different body systems fit together.

When I tried it out at school, it loaded very slowly. That could be because it’s a very large file (which it is) but is probably also due to our school’s Internet link being really pokey lately.

The Visible Body is also free to use (but you do have to register) and if your school’s budget is limited (and who’s isn’t?) that’s a big plus.