Educational Technology Weblog

If you are looking for an EASY and very cool way to promote community amongst your interest groups, I have found TabUp to be an outstanding resource. If your school district or community group does not provide you with your own web presence FREE TO YOU, and you would like to create a private, semiprivate, or open destination for communication, TabUp can provide just what you are looking for.

With features like a shared calendar, forums for discussion, links to various web resources, and the ability to make this modrated or invite only ALL FOR FREE, I can’t think of a school group, sports team, or common interest group that would not find some use for this service. Please take a look, and add your thoughts to this page. The page is not intended to be a primary source of new information, but rather a living example of another great FREE tool available to educators and community groups.  I will be automatically notified of any changes or additions, and will be sure to act on valid suggestions.

Me neither but I felt like I was very close!

Today, I had the pleasure of video conferencing with a 5/6 grade class in Central Butte, Canada. Participating in the activity was (teacher) Barb Mcinnis (& her students), Tim Lauer (Portland, Oregon), Tom Barrett (Nottingham, England) and Dean Shareski (Moose Jaw, Canada). This is direct from Mrs. Mcinnis’ class blog

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The grade 5/6 students had the chance to meet people from different parts of the world thanks to wireless technology!  On Tuesday, November 4 we participated in a web conference.  We had the opportunity, thank you to Dean Shareski (division technology) to interview educators from Nottingham, England;Portland, OR; Florida; and Moose Jaw via a web cam.  We were able to see and talk to these individuals. We first asked them questions to try and locate them, then we talked about the wireless technology that exists in their classrooms and schools.  Wow!  there are sure some great pieces of technology being used!! This project came about from an article we had read called “Get Set For the Net”. This article helped us understand how past inventions lead us to the wireless age we live in. Most of the students take this age for granted and do not realize the negative and positive effects it can have on our lives. We watched “Smart Guy:Stranger on the Net” to help us become more “Net” smart. Then we decided to do something positive and exciting with our wireless technology.

I’d like to commend Mrs. Mcinnis for her innovative vision as she seeks out relevant technologies to make learning for her students relevant. Wouldn’t you love to be in her class? This is an easy and free activity that took less than 40 minutes and can easily be replicated in YOUR classroom. Where would you find another class to communicate with? Try ePals, for starters.

This is the edited version that Dean created (5 min):

This is the entire conversation (40min):

Thank you, Dean, for asking me to participate. It was truly a pleasure to “meet” Tim, Tom, Mrs. Mcinnis and all of her students.

P.S. I hope my clues (about where I live) still have them stumped!!

The Technical Stuff:
We used Adobe Connect to have our online conversation and I recorded the session. When we were finished, I downloaded the video in .flv format (the default for recorded Adobe Connect sessions) and then uploaded that file to our school district’s Vodcast server (Video On Demand). I was then able to copy the code (anyone know how to read code??? Certainly not me, but I know how to copy and paste!) and pasted it into this blog. Code like that can be pasted into ANY webpage, including Edline! The video is also available on MediaShare along with a description so other teachers can easily access and replicate similar activities in their classes.

As most of you are probably aware, we will host our 11th annual SDPBC Technology Conference in March 2009. We are pleased to be returning to Santaluces High School for the second consecutive year. Here an example of a free online publishing tool that you can employ to spread the word. Feel free to share this countdown with anyone you think might want to have it simply by clicking on share in the lower left corner! Or better yet… go to www.sproutbuilder.com create a free account and build your own! You can build all kinds of widgets and other neat things. If you build something you’d like to share, LET US KNOW!!

If you wold like to add a little personality to your Edline page, possibly lighten up the presentation of some of your content, or try and inject some creativity into your project based learning. I recommend checking out Go!Animate. You’ll find this web based publishing program at www.goanimate.com and it does require an email to create an account, but the service is free and FUN!! Here’s an example of something I put together in about 15 minutes, and I am still learning the interface. Your students will amaze you!!

Here’s a great way for elementary teachers or parents to help your students practice for those weekly spelling tests that we all know and love!  Also, you can search for a huge number of provided lists that cover a large range of age appropriateness, and content specific subjects.

As a teacher or parent, you can very easily create a “weekly spelling list” that can be accessed at home with a username and password of your choice. You have the choice of making your list public and searchable, or keep it private so only your students will know how to find it.  No email or identification is required of the student, and when they log in, they will be presented with several very interactive ways to learn their words. They can hear their words, take practice tests or play one of several games.
Jump in and give it a try!  I am using it with my children and they really seem to enjoy it.  I am sure you’ll find the same results with your students.  Let us know how it goes, and if you’ve shared any great new lists!

As information technologies have advanced rapidly, things like Google, blogs, Blackberry, i-Phones, and social networks have become ever more prevalent, and being “connected” has taken on a whole new meaning for many people. For more and more people the thought of being “offline” for even a few minutes is a real cause for concern. I read recently an entry form the creator of one of my favorite “social bookmarking” pages www.twine.com (which is currently in invite only beta to participate) His thoughts are that this prevalence and that the ubiquitous nature of technologies and sharing of information will only continue to grow.

This brief article is definitely worth a read.

Some unintended results have come from all of these advances. Some people find that keeping afloat in this massive wave of information is a challenge. Here’s a link to listen to some very tech savvy individuals mull this over at a session of the Churchill Club that took place earlier this year. (MAY NOT WORK FROM WITHIN OUR FIREWALL)

I will leave you with one more look at the same general trend towards a possibly “techno-centric” future. This is brought to you by the ever sharp Colbert Report

Review your experiences, and what you know of your students’ experiences, and let us know your thoughts…pro…con… or otherwise.

bubbl.us is a free online brainstorming and mind mapping tool that lets you easily create a graphic organizer, concept map, mind map or organizational chart and then share your ideas with colleagues or classmates. The Flash & AJAX based interface make it really simple to use with only a browser - no downloads and all you need to create an account is an email address! You can save your sheets, print them as images or save them to your computer.

The Web 2.0 features provide you with either a link or the html embed code so you can post your work on a web page (Edline) or email a link. In the embedded example shown here, you can pan and zoom using the controls or the scroll wheel on your mouse.

There are many obvious uses in the classroom:

• Identify existing knowledge
• Identify relationships between concepts
• Record facts & details as a pre-writing strategy
• Brainstorming - collecting and connecting ideas
• Timelines
• Student collaboration
• Sharing ideas with communities of users

Check it out and look for me on bubbl.us

The photo is a screenshot of the Adobe Connect session we used to bring in a team member for the meeting. Steve and Ben, from VoiceThread, are the two men in the top-left corner. I don’t know why I didn’t think to take a picture with a real camera or even my cellphone, but anyway, this is the best I could do. (Sorry, Ben and Steve… you deserve a better picture for sure!)

This week our department had the pleasure of meeting with the gentlemen who developed EdVoiceThread. They are geniuses (and extremely personable - go figure) and have absolutely thought of everything when it comes to developing a product for K-12 and higher education, that is safe, secure, reasonably priced and has the potential for huge impact on learning and global collaboration. How nice it would be to bring something so powerful and easy to our school district!

If YOU haven’t heard of Ed VoiceThread, you are missing one of the most remarkable FREE 21st Century online learning applications that you can be using today! You must check out these examples !

Anyone can create a VoiceThread by adding a piece of media ( JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, PPT, PPS, PDF, DOC, XLS and a variety of video types) and then allow others to make comments in any of 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. Allowing group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

The beauty of VoiceThread is that it’s simple and safe! Here is one I created that I use as a demo. You’ll see a DE Streaming video segment and some video, audio and text comments. You can let it play or click on the avatars to activate the demo student comments. There are also some other comments that have been added by real teachers as I’ve used this to demonstrate this in workshops.

I’ve since learned however, that the way I’ve been recommending that teachers use it is not a best practice at all. In the recording below, you’ll hear me tell you that I set up one account and let my students create their own profiles under my account. Then they sit at a computer in my classroom and contribute to the VoiceThread. Although this would certainly work, especially in a K or 1st grade classroom with supervision, the problem would be that in an instant a student could accidentally delete the entire VoiceThread.

and……….that……….can’t………..be…………undone!

They also mentioned a feature that is coming soon is the ability to CLONE a VoiceThread. Once you’ve spent time creating a VoiceThread that might be complex, it would be pretty nice to be able to clone it to customize it for another use later on.

Please leave a comment about how you might use VoiceThread in your classroom or any barriers you foresee to a successful implementation. I hope you’ll also leave a voice comment on the VoiceThread here.

Thanks for your comments!

Scholarly Research on Student Blogging

We have our share of skeptics around here when it comes to Web 2.0 tools and their value in the classroom. Believe if or not, I’m one of them! There has been an ongoing conversation for a few years now about how these simple publishing and collaboration tools might be used to impact instruction. From the “This is amazing!” to the “This is bunk!”, there has been a healthy mix of agreements and disagreements about how a teacher might use Web 2.0 tools in their classrooms.

Now comes a new study from Jeff Felix, Superintendent of Bonsall Union School District in Bonsall, CA. Mr. Felix’s scholarly, peer-reviewed article can be found here as a direct download of a PDF file, or you can visit Classroom 2.0 where he discusses his findings a bit.

Some of the conclusions from the article are interesting on their face and worth a little more study and reflection. In no order of importance here are a few statements that jumped out at me:

• There were four communication patterns teachers perceived as a result of blogging: (a) increased peer interaction among students, (b) increased teacher interaction with the students, (c) students exhibiting more positive emotions about learning, and (d) an increased sharing of ideas among students and with the teacher.
• The data from responding edubloggers describe student learners who have been a part of a blogging classroom as engaged in four types of learning: (a) students increasing their understanding of topics, making sense of what they learn, and developing their own understanding of the subject matter, (b) students cultivating deeper thought processes; creating meaning and new ideas from the subject, (c) students exploring the subject beyond the immediate requirements, and (d) students connecting with previous experiences learned in or out of the classroom.
• Blogging by its very nature gives students a vehicle for sharing their ideas with one another, a contemporary way to gain additional knowledge or understanding that resonates with students being raised in the digital age.

We’re moving right along here at our new blogging enterprise. We’ve hit a few snags along the way, but for the most part our first serious stab at implementing Web 2.0 tools in our school district has been going well. From the simple standpoint of cost–everything we’re currently experimenting with is completely F.R.E.E. –and, well, things are going very well.

In addition, we’ve had some interesting internal discussions about the role of these tools and how we might use them to impact instruction. As part of the process we’ve been mind-mapping Web 2.0 tools and services we are considering–and how they are interconnected–using the cool little free service from bubbl.us. (Create an account and make your own!)

Here’s a snapshot of our efforts so far. You can drag or re-size the image below or visit our bubbl.us account and see the full size map.

Now, what do you think? Seeing how these tools might be used how would you like to see these services provided? Are there risks involved? As always, we encourage your comments!