Week 5, Item 11

Web 2.0 Application Awards and Ning

I enjoyed reviewing some of the 174 web sites listed on this page and appreciated the organizational categories. The choices of tools to use are amazing. Sometimes choice can be overwhelming, however. My favorite tool is by far delicious. I appreciate linking to other delicious sites of trusted sources so that I can use tried and true sites similar to the service the Web 2.0 application awards provides users. I created a delicious site and it cana be accessed at http://delicious.com/TechFacilitator.

Ning is another amazing tool. I explored several networks and noted that many were not current. It appeared as though several of the networks I viewed started as a great idea but fizzled. Like twitter, it seems to me that you need to enter a group that you know is going to be productive but finding that group can be daunting.

Travelpod (http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq) --this site is wonderful. All geography teachers should have this as a fun game for the students to play.

Week 5, Item 10

There are thousands of image generators available to use however I’ve learned that not all produce code to embed into a web page. For this exercise, my first exploration was Make Beliefs Comix. Several teachers at my school use http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ as a quick summarizing tool. Make Beliefs Comix is a tool that was originally developed for autistic children. I shared this tool with a social worker at one of our elementary schools, and she enjoyed success using the site with a child who was experiencing family difficulties. This tool allowed him to show expression he would not allow himself to display. I learned, however, that created comics can only be viewed or printed not embedded. My comic strip can be viewed
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/comix.php?comix_id=29662908. The instructions mentioned that makebeliefs does not store comics so I’m not sure how long the strip will be available.

My second stab and an image generator was www.kerpoof.com. They’ve changed this site since I first learned about it into a game. Like Make Beliefs, users can view or print the creation. I liked kerpoof as a fun tool for elementary students to summarize landforms. There are many different scenes to choose from to explain what they’ve learned.

My last exploration was jellymuffin. This site is definitely tailored for the myspace user to embellish personal pages. There are many advertisements on the site and I do not think I would use this in a class situation; however, it did give me code to embed for glitter text. There are many different image generators available at this site. (http://www.jellymuffin.com/generators/flash_glitter_text/) When I tried to paste the code into my blog, the code was not accepted. I then went to http://www.familylobby.com and created the "welcome" sign displayed above. Too much work for the result I was looking for but I did learn from the process.

Week 4, Item 8 & 9 (RSS Feeds)

Our assignment this week explained how to use an RSS feed reader suggesting either Bloglines or Google Reader. I've been using Google Reader via iGoggle for the past year and am hooked. I like the fact that I can quickly look at the bylines to mark for further reading. I do find that if I do not check in on a daily basis, the feeds pile up to an overwhelming number. I subscribe to the PA Discovery Educator Network blog, Digital Passports, PDE Webinars , TipLine, and Tech LEARNing. In addition, I use the RSS feed feature through Outlook 2007 as well. I like the Google Reader better because I can access my feeds at any Internet accessible computer. Our Moodle site also has an RSS feed feature that teachers can add RSS feeds to their courses. This has proved helpful and is used heavily by the elementary students that access my Tech Tower page. I have a running feed from Storynory which lists five short stories students may listen too. On our Moodle tech site for teachers, I have CNN Education and Book Bites for Kids for teachers to use.

I did not try Bloglines simply because I'm familar with Google Reader and have successfully been using it. If I am able to get a class of teachers together to introduce RSS feeds, I will visit Bloglines to compare. I offered a class on RSS feeds this spring, but had no students register to share. Working through the 23 Things list has given me inspiration to work on an online guidesheet for teachers. I think RSS feeds (teacher identified or as an assignment for students to find valuable feeds to share with the class) would be invaluable to use in the classroom to supplement lessons and text.

One warning to using RSS feeds, however, I lose track of time when checking my blogs because there is always something interesting to learn from them. Therefore, I need to give myself a set time limit to check blogs especially if I'm at work.

On a separate note, I've expanded my use of picture sharing web tools to Picassa. Because I highly doubt many people are following my "tourin web 2.0" blog and because I'm so pleased I was able to successfully use the Picassa picture-sharing tool, I've included a link below to view pictures of our time in Florida. I created a private album at https://exch1.easdpa.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://picasaweb.google.com/tootsaflut/2008Florida?authkey=hcW0leFzR7o. I liked the ease of using Picassa because the site automatically resized the pictures. I can envision many ways teachers could use this tool in the classroom. At the very least, creating a private album would be a wonderful way to share pictures from a recent field trip or class activity with parents.

David Grisman

David Grisman,
originally uploaded by zweb20tourist.

This is an example of use the framer tool from Flickr tools

Week 3, Items #6 and #7

Mash ups and making curriculum connections occupied my time today. I sat down early this morning to complete all the items in Week 3 and I'm now ready to post and move on to the next week. I tend to become preoccupied with explorations and then two hours later remember the reason why I originally sat down at the computer.

I enjoyed the following sites during my wanderings through the Flickr mashups:
Quick Online Tips (http://www.quickonlinetips.com) I found this to be an interesting site full of things to explore.
Big Huge Labs (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/). This site has oodles of ideas on how to use Flickr and ultimately multimedia project ideas for the classroom. Some of the project ideas I came up with through this site are:

Create a pocketmod: http://pocketmod.com This site helps the user create a pocket guide for just about anything. My thought was to use it as a gimicky review for a test. One down side is that new information cannot be typed--only a template can be made for the user to handwrite information.

Framer: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/frame.php This is a cute way to add a frame to any picture.

Captioner: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php

I saved the best for last--I can envision students having fun while learning if a teacher posts images to a flickr account and they have to come up with an appropriate caption to paraphrase the picture. My explorations can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/ tag is: zeweb20tourist. I'm not sure; however, if keying in the tag listed above will display my account. I need to explore the publishing options as I think I marked them for family and friends only.

Week 3 Exploring Flickr

I must say, I spent an hour playing with my avatar from last week's lesson before I even got to Flickr which is the main reason I sat down at the computer in the first place!! I am excited to report that I successfully added my yahoo avatar to my Moodle page. A small fete but one that make the page a little more fun and gave me some time to play with the html code in both tools. Now onto Flickr.

Flickr has been a great tool for me to lift (with permission) students' graduation photos for promo movies I had to develop for my work. I use the tags to locate our area or the kids' give me the Flickr URL. I have not utilized Flickr groups todate.

The first task I completed was to explore Jacksonville, FL, photos on Flickr because we plan to visit my son there next week. Before I knew it, another 30 minutes passed because there were so many interesting photos to look at as well as a default map that displayed when I keyed in the address. The site of one of the photo groups I viewed is http://www.panoramio.com/photo/491479
. I then explored the library projects on Flickr--there are so many creative people!!

I created a Flickr account and uploaded three vacation pictures as a trial run. My link is http://www.flickr.com/photos/28678602@N03/?saved=1.

I think it is so important to honor the privacy of subjects in your pictures and I appreciated the reminder written about "photo posting ettiquette" in the Web 20 tutorial instructions. That being said, this is such a fabulous way to learn in the classroom--even as a discussion starter for students to guess where a certain picture was taken if learning about a region in the classroom.

Learning more about Flickr was delightful! Looking forward to my next stop on the tour.

Week 2 Creating the Avatar

I loved creating my avatar. I spent an excessive amount of time paging through the options to add to my avatar. I hope to see avatars used in education--I think it is a way kids can "try on" new ideas or communicate without being judged. I tried second life which is based on avatars navigating a virtual world and did not like the environment--possibly I will try second life a second time since I enjoyed this activity so much.

Week 1

The hardest part of the process of setting up a blog for me was creating the name. To answer the exercise questions:

hardest habit of lifelong learning: View problems as challenges--I tend to shut down when problems arise. Excellent idea to view a problem as a learning experience. I tend to see problems the same as the "go to jail" card in monopoly--I hate wasting time--however it is important to think of the "wasted time" as a learning experience.

easiest habit: using technology to my advantage--can't wait to learn more ways to be an efficient user of technology.